WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 


WILLIAM  DEAN-HOWELLS 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  ACHIEVEMENT 
OF  A  LITERARY  ARTIST 


BY 


ALEXANDER  HARVEY 


NEW  YORK 

B.  W.  HUEBSCH 

1917 


COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY  B.  W.  HUEBSCH 
PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


To 
LEONARD  DALTON  ABBOTT 


371623 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  THE  LITERARY  SUPERSTITION  THAT  MAKES 
NECESSARY  AN  INTERPRETATION  OP  HOW- 
ELLS  1 

II     THE    CRITICAL   FACULTY   OF    THE    ENGLISH       6 

III  THE  HOWELLS  AMERICAN 31 

IV  THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  HOWELLS     ....     38 

V     A  STUDY  IN  SUBTLETY 44 

« 

VI     THE  PURITY  OF  THE  WOMEN  OF  HOWELLS     55 
VII     A  GLANCE  AT  MARCIA  ...          ...     69 

VIII     THE   HUB   OF   THE   UNIVERSE   OF   HOWELLS     78 

IX     FACTORS  DETERMINING  THE  RANK  OF  HOW 
ELLS  AS  A  CLASSIC 103 

X     HOWELLS  AS  THE  EXPONENT  OF  OUR  MAN 
NERS        115  - 

XI     THE  AMERICAN  ARISTOCRACY  AND  THE  COREY 

FAMILY 123 

XII  THE  HOWELLS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WOMAN  .  .131 

XIII  THE  HOWELLS  MASTERPIECE 145 

XIV  THE  REVOLTS  OF  HOWELLS 161 

XV     THE  "SISSY"  SCHOOL  OF  LITERATURE     .      .178 

XVI     THE  LIMITATIONS  OF  HOWELLS     ....   200 

INDEX  .   233 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 


THE   LITERARY   SUPERSTITION   THAT 

MAKES   NECESSARY   AN    INTERPRETATION 

OF    HOWELLS 

I  AM  setting  out  upon  an  interpretation  of  the 
work  of  William  Dean  Howells  with  incidental 
reference  to  the  British  literary  superstition 
because  that  superstition  has  left  his  art  an  un 
heeded  glory  of  our  country.  The  literary  art 
of  Howells  is  no  less  precious  a  portion  of  our 
national  patrimony  than  Harvard  or  the  Mis 
sissippi  and  it  is  time  we  regarded  him,  there 
fore,  as  something  more  than  a  "successful 
writer."  This  must  seem  an  extravagant  way 
of  speaking  to  those  only  among  our  people 
who  are  under  the  spell  of  what  the  French 
call  "arrivism,"  the  worship  of  material  suc- 

1 


William  Dean  Howells 

cess.  We  Americans  are  taught  to  ignore 
those  glories  of  our  land  which  do  not  rate 
themselves  commercially.  The  taxable  value 
of  New  York  city  real  estate  is  impressive  to 
us  because  it  can  be  set  down  in  dollars  and 
cents  and  still  it  would  be  better  to  lose  it  all, 
to  have  it  wiped  out,  than  to  lose  such  a  na 
tional  asset  as  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham." 
I  am  not  in  the  least  disconcerted  by  my  knowl 
edge  that  this  method  of  approaching  the  sub 
ject  must  amuse  the  manufacturers  of  auto 
mobiles. 

There  is  also  another  difficulty.  The  litera 
ture  of  our  country  has  from  time  to  time  been 
patronized  by  men  and  women  of  culture.  It 
is  taken  too  readily  for  granted  that  disparage 
ment  of  American  writers  and  glorification  of 
European  classics  give  our  critics  a  right  to 
their  own  imbecility.  We  have  all  thus  be 
come  afraid  to  take  American  prose  and  poetry 
very  seriously.  The  truth  is  that  the  Ameri 
can  literary  artist  is  entitled  to  higher  rank 
than  his  European  contemporary.  In  Eng- 

2 


Literature 


land,  at  any  rate  in  our  century,  the  number  of 
artists  in  literature  steadily  declines.  I  dis 
like  the  use  of  that  word  "literature,"  for  the 
English  have  made  it  somewhat  ridiculous. 
For  the  great  difficulty  with  American  litera 
ture  is  the  attitude  of  contempt  for  it  which  so 
many  Americans  imagine  to  be  an  evidence  of 
their  own  culture. 

Those  who  profess  this  contempt  have  ap 
parently  made  no  comparative  investigations  of 
their  own.  He  who,  having  studied  the  litera 
ture  of  our  country  with  care,  announces  his 
contempt  for  it,  should  cite  illustrations  in  de 
fense  of  his  view.  Nor  should  comparisons  be 
carried  back  to  a  remote  antiquity.  It  is  fair 
to  compare  our  literature  in  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  with  that  of  any  other  country  in  the  nine 
teenth  century,  but  it  is  absurd  to  compare  our 
literature  as  a  whole  with  that  of,  say,  France 
as  a  whole.  Facile  and  superficial  compari 
sons  of  the  kind,  unsupported  by  adequate  il 
lustrations,  are  fashionable  among  criticasters 
whose  reputations  are  serious  only  to  the  un- 

3 


William  Dean  Howells 

discriminating.  Let  us  look  at  them,  as  Dante 
says,  and  pass  on  unheeding. 

There  has  grown  with  us  a  theory,  or  con 
vention,  that  God  has  denied  to  Americans  the 
faculty  that  makes  possible  the  creation  of 
great  literature.  This  delusion  is  promoted  by 
a  significant  accident.  Our  people,  even  our 
well  educated  people,  live  in  systematized 
ignorance  of  the  accumulated  treasures  of  the 
national  literature.  In  every  great  European 
country  the  accumulated  treasures  of  the  na 
tional  literature  are  accessible  to  all  in  artistic, 
and  substantial  form  at  a  price  that  is  almost, 
nominal.  The  American  gets  a  few  of  his 
country's  classics  when,  and  only  when,  it  en." 
ters  the  head  of  some  London  publisher  to  put 
one  of  them  into  his  popular  library  of  "masr 
terpieces."  Such  is  the  rule,  with  a  few  excep 
tions. 

We  are  about  where  we  were  when  Charles 
Dickens  in  this  country  made  himself  very  con 
descending  to  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Poor  Poe 
called  upon  Dickens  in  the  hope  of  meeting  a 

4 


Standards 


man  who  could  understand.  A  mistake  could 
not  be  greater  than  that  of  the  young  Ameri 
can  writer  who  seeks  out  a  British  author  in 
the  hope  of  getting  a  little  encouragement  or 
advice.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the  Briton 
will  assure  the  American  that  the  writers  of 
the  United  States  have  no  standards.  When 
the  American  asks  what  "standards"  are  he 
will  be  favored  as  a  rule  with  a  dissertation 
upon  his  own  incapacity  to  understand  such 
subject.  The  Briton  is  firmly  convinced 
he  has  what  he  is  pleased  to  call  standards. 
He  has  no  doubt  of  his  own  capacity  to  sit  in 
judgment  upon  American  literature  and  to 
pronounce  it  beneath  contempt. 


II 

THE   CRITICAL  FACULTY   OF  THE   ENGLISH 

THE  conduct  of  the  English  in  thus  assum 
ing  to  pass  judgment  upon  the  literature  of 
any  nation  whatever,  their  own  included,  has 
long  been  a  source  of  amusement  to  the  con 
tinent  of  Europe.  It  is  thoroughly  under 
stood  on  the  continent  that  the  literature  of 
those  English,  viewed  as  a  whole  and  making 
allowances  for  exceptional  achievements,  is 
second  rate.  In  philosophy,  for  example,  the 
literature  of  the  English  is  negligible.  In  the 
drama,  English  literature  outside  of  Shake 
speare  is  unimportant  compared  with  that  of 
the  other  great  European  nations  generally. 
In  fiction  the  English  have  produced  no  nov 
elist  of  the  rank  of  Balzac,  no  writer  of  tales 
who  can  compare  in  artistry  with  Poe  or  de 

6 


Philistines 


Maupassant.  In  the  field  of  criticism  the 
English  can  sustain  no  comparison  whatever 
with  the  continent  of  Europe.  Even  in  their 
Shakespearean  criticism  as  in  their  study  of  the 
classics  of  antiquity,  the  English  trudge  after 
the  continent  of  Europe. 

The  truth  is  that  the  English  are  not  a  nation 
of  artists  at  all  and  the  literature  of  their 
philosophy  justifies  a  suspicion  that  they  are 
not  a  nation  of  thinkers.  From  this  point  of 
view,  it  is  significant  that  the  English  are  not 
the  pioneers  of  the  several  scientific  revolutions 
that  transform  the  world  as  we  watch  it.  The 
English  did  not  give  us  the  aeroplane  or  the 
Zeppelin.  We  do  not  owe  synthetic  chemistry 
to  the  English.  They  did  not  make  the 
pioneer  discoveries  that  led  to  "the  new  knowl 
edge"  in  physics — radium  emanations.  They 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  extraordinary  ad 
vance  in  our  knowledge  of  all  heredity  which 
goes  by  the  name  of  Mendelism.  The  new 
psychology  is  not  English  nor  is  the  theory  of 
mutations  which  brought  such  renown  to  de 

7. 


William  Dean  Howells 

Vries.  The  state  to  which  science  is  reduced 
in  England  now  is  a  disgrace,  even  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  low  intellectual  level  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon. 

There  is  nothing  to  wonder  at  in  the  fact, 
therefore,  that  the  critical  judgments  of  the 
English  are  received  with  little  respect  on  the 
continent  of  Europe  when  those  judgments 
have  to  do  with  the  arts  and  the  sciences.  It 
is  thoroughly  understood  on  the  continent  of 
Europe  that  the  English  mind  is  second  rate, 
that  the  English  themselves  are  not  a  nation  of 
artists  and  that  their  criticism  of  the  achieve 
ment  of  even  a  Hottentot  with  the  pencil  need 
disturb  no  one.  Nothing,  consequently,  is 
more  amusing  than  the  respect  with  which 
Americans  trained  in  our  universities  and  ad 
dicting  themselves  to  literature  receive  the 
critical  judgments  of  the  English  in  regard  to 
both  poetry  and  prose.  If  the  English  declare 
that  in  literature  the  Americans  have  no 
*  "standards,"  the  assertion  is  received  as  if  the 
English  themselves  had  standards  or  were  com- 

8 


Poor  Poe! 


Detent  to  decide  what  shall  or  shall  not  be 
standards  in  literature  or  the  arts.1 
~To  those  who  have  paid  no  particular  atten 
tion  to  the  matter,  it  may  seem  incredible  that 
American  opinion  on  the  subject  of  greatness 
in  literature  is  virtually  made  in  England,  but 
such  is  the  case.  Never  does  it  occur  to  the 
American  mind,  apparently,  to  ask  for  ev- 

of  the  English  to  pass 


judgment^upon  ourjiterature  in  thisi  style,  or 
upon  the  literature  of  any  country  at  all,  for 
that  matter,  their  own  included.  Now,  it 
would  be  difficult  to  say  which  is  more  striking, 
the  preposterous  character  of  the  average  Eng 
lish  judgment  of  our  literature  or  the  tone  of 
pontifical  finality  with  which  that  judgment  is 
pronounced.  I  have  seen  almost  the  whole  of 
Poe's  work  in  both  prose  and  verse  dismissed 
in  a  great  London  daily  as  beneath  contempt. 
Nor  are  the  judgments  of  the  average 

iThe  point  is  well  brought  out  by  Howells  in  such  works 
as  "My  Literary  Passions"  and  "Criticism  and  Fiction." 
Times  have  changed  for  the  worse  since  those  books  were 
written. 

9 


William  Dean  Howells 

American  critic  on  the  subject  of  the  relation 
of  our  literature  to  that  of  the  English  a  bit 
less  extraordinary.  I  saw  the  other  day  in 
the  "literary"  supplement  of  a  big  New  York 
daily  the  statement — made  with  perfect  grav 
ity — that  "it  was  in  England  that  Poe's  genius 
found  its  first  and  highest  appreciation." 
Again,  if  London  dailies  all  agree  that  Mr. 
So-and-So  is  the  greatest  living  English  nov 
elist,  the  verdict  is  accepted  with  perfect  con 
fidence  by  the  head  of  the  department  of  liter 
ature  at  an  American  university.  Never 
would  it  occur  to  the  head  of  the  department  of 
literature  at  any  American  university  that  the 
English  are  entirely  incompetent  to  decide  who 
is  or  who  isn't  their  greatest  living  novelist. 

The  English  did  not  know  who  their  greatest 
painter  is  until  they  learned  his  name  on  the 
continent  of  Europe.  The  English  did  not 
know  who  their  greatest  poet  was  until  the  con 
tinent  of  Europe  afforded  them  a  clue.  The 
critical  faculty  of  the  English  is  in  such  a  state 
that  Europe  as  a  whole  would  not  accept  Eng- 

10 


Quacks 


land's  verdict  on  one  of  her  own  writers.  That 
is  why  this  country  is  the  paradise  of  the  Brit 
ish  mediocrity.  The  English  quack  thinker, 
the  English  quack  poet,  the  English  quack 
novelist,  the  English  quack  essayist,  the  Eng 
lish  quack  critic  and  the  English  quack  scholar, 
drive  a  brisk  trade  over  here  by  dealing  in  the 
greatness  of  one  another. 

These  quacks  are  the  moral  successors  of 
those  Englishmen  who  in  the  Victorian  period 
appeared  in  our  homes  in  the  capacity  of  aristo 
crats.  They  were  quack  aristocrats.  They 
gave  themselves  out  as  scions  of  the  house  of 
Cavendish.  They  affected  a  profound  con 
tempt  for  the  judgment  of  the  Americans,  for 
the  ideas  of  the  Americans,  for  the  culture  of 
the  Americans.  By  the  time  these  English 
had  decamped  with  the  cash  of  their  enter 
tainers,  it  transpired  that  they  did  not  belong 
to  the  house  of  Cavendish.  The  credentials  of 
those  Englishmen  were  written  by  quacks 
like  themselves.  They  seemed  to  be  real  aris 
tocrats  because  of  their  contempt  for  America, 

11 


William  Dean  Howells 

just  as  an  English  writer  seems  to  some  of  our 
college  professors  to  be  a  great  critic  because 
he  despises  Poe.1 

Our  young  American  writers,  then,  should 
not  heed  the  British  poet  or  the  British  critic 
over  here  who  tells  them  that  we  have  no  stand 
ards  and  no  literature.  The  statement  may  be 
true.  The  continent  of  Europe  would  not 
accept  such  a  statement  as  true,  merely  because 
the  English  said  it. 

Why  should  we? 

Let  there  be  no  toleration  henceforth  of  the 

1 1  allow  myself  the  luxury  of  quoting  what  Howells  says 
of  the  English  in  his  clever  Italian  tale  "A  Fearful  Respon 
sibility,"  published  by  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.: 

"'I  have  been  wondering  if,  in  his  phenomenal  way,  he  is 
not  a  final  expression  of  the  national  genius — the  stupid  con 
tempt  for  the  rights  of  others;  the  tacit  denial  of  the  rights 
of  any  people  who  are  not  at  English  mercy;  the  assumption 
that  the  courtesies  and  decencies  of  life  are  for  use  exclu 
sively  towards  Englishmen.' 

"This  was  in  that  embittered  old  war  time:  we  have  since 
learned  how  forbearing  and  generous  and  amiable  English 
men  are;  how  they  never  take  advantage  of  any  one  they 
believe  stronger  than  themselves,  or  fail  in  consideration  for 
those  they  imagine  their  superiors;  how  you  have  but  to  show 
yourself  successful  in  order  to  win  their  respect,  and  even 
affection."—^  Fearful  Responsibility,  edition  of  1881,  page  100. 

12 


Newspapers 


attitude  which  has  been  "caught"  like  an  infec 
tion  by  our  critics.  Our  critics  are  the  young 
men  and  women  who  are  found  patronizing 
American  authors — patronizing  William  Dean 
Howells  himself,  telling  us  that  even  Edgar 
Allan  Poe  would  not  find  publication  for  his 
tales  to-day — as  if  that  statement,  supposing  it 
to  be  accurate,  were  anything  but  disgraceful 
to  our  country's  taste.  It  is  all  part  of  the 
paradox  that  our  periodicals,  our  publishers, 
our  editors,  our  newspapers  are,  on  the  whole, 
enemies  of  our  literature.  There  is  little  to 
choose  between  them,  but  jour  ^newspapers,  on 
the  whole,  are  the  most  important  of  the  many 
American  enemies  of  American  literature. 

They  contrive  to  invest  our  literature  with 
a  dullness  altogether  gratuitous.  I  defy  any 
man  of  letters,  to  say  nothing  of  the  average 
reader,  to  scan  the  "reviews"  in  an  ordinary 
American  daily  without  getting  the  impression 
that  books  must  be  dull.  If  a  work  of  fiction 
be  under  consideration,  for  instance,  do  we  get 
a  vivid  characterization  of  the  heroine  from  the 

13 


William  Dean  Howells 

standpoint  of  her  wit,  her  beauty  or  her  intelli 
gence?  Not  a  bit  of  it!  The  hero  of  a  novel 
may  dazzle  even  the  villain  with  the  quality  of 
his  epigrams,  but  not  one  of  them  will  ever  be 
quoted  that  we  may  discern  the  author's  mettle. 
The  atmosphere  of  a  novel,  its  "note,"  the 
attitude  to  life  it  discloses  and  its  realization 
of  its  particular  mood  are  not  hinted.  News 
paper  reviewers  in  our  country  are  fond  of  the 
early  Victorian  terms  "plot,"  and  "original 
ity,"  whatever  the  things  are.  A  book  review 
in  an  American  newspaper  is  either  a  display 
of  impertinence  to  an  author  or  of  ill-breeding 
to  the  public.  The  offense  of  the  newspaper 
book  review  is  usually  that  of  affected  sophisti 
cation.  This  sophistication  is  on  a  level  with 
that  of  Mrs.  Wilfer.  When  the  rich  man's 
liveried  lackey  came  to  her  humble  abode,  Sirs. 
Wilfer  stared  him  haughtily  out  of  counte 
nance,  lest  he  suspect  she  had  never  seen  a 
liveried  lackey  before.  She  is  one  of  a  numer 
ous  class,  seen  everywhere.  Such  people  com 
plain  of  the  spoons  and  the  napkins  at  the  club. 

14 


Reviewers 


They  have  never  been  accustomed  to  anything 
really  nice  in  their  lives,  but  with  their  loud 
complaints  they  try  to  convey  an  impression 
that  they  dine  with  Lucullus  all  the  time. 

In  precisely  that  fashion  the  newspaper  book 
reviewer  tries  to  impress  us  with  his  culture  by 
picking  flaws  here  and  there  in  points  of  detail. 
Any  one  who  understands  criticism  at  all  is 
aware  that  taste  and  judgment  are  manifested 
in  the  discovery  of  an  unsuspected  merit  rather 
than  in  the  proclamation  of  a  glaring  defect. 
Moreover,  a  work  of  art  is  to  be  criticised  pri 
marily  from  its  own  point  of  view  and  not  from 
the  point  of  view  of  an  enemy  of  its  school  or 
class.  It  would  be  unfair  to  Homer  to  ask 
Poe,  who  despised  epics,  to  review  the  Iliad. 
Similarly,  it  is  unfair  to  our  literature  to  sub 
mit  it  to  the  judgment  of  the  newspapers. 

An  American  newspaper  is  obliged  to  reflect 
the  native  American  Philistinisms,  the  native 
American  awe  of  alien  literature  and  the  con 
ventional  American  contempt  for  American 
literature.  Naturally,  American  newspapers 

15 


William  Dean  Howells 

cannot  admit  this  as  a  true  statement  of  their 
attitude  any  more  than  they  could  admit  a  chal 
lenge  of  their  conventional  assumption  that  the 
American  people  are  the  friends  of  freedom 
and  democracy.  Let  us,  then,  glance  at  the 
facts:  let  us  see  what  names  in  literature  are 
popularized  by  American  newspapers.  Let  us 
see  whether  American  literature  is  related  to 
American  life  by  American  newspapers  or 
whether  they  relate  an  alien  literature  to  our 
life,  not  casually  but  all  the  time. 

The  greatest  living  artist  in  the  field  of 
fiction  who  uses  the  English  language  happens 
to  be  an  American.  He  happens  also  to  be 
William  Dean  Howells. 

In  the  sheer  artistry  of  his  style,  in  the  sub 
tlety  of  his  delineation  of  character  and  in  his 
sway  over  his  readers  he  far  surpasses,  taking 
his  work  as  a  whole,  any  living  British  novelist. 
The  career  and  the  capacity  of  this  man  render 
his  views  of  certain  aspects  of  the  world  crisis 
not  only  important,  but  timely.  We  don't  get 
them.  We  have  instead,  as  part  of  the  cabled 

16 


The  Neglected 

news  of  the  day,  the  obviously  ill  informed 
puerilities  of  a  British  novelist  whose  genius  is 
to  me  doubtful. 

The  American  novelist  may  get  a  paragraph 
on  a  Saturday  when  he  brings  out  a  book,  or  his 
face  may  look  out  at  us  of  a  Sunday  when,  in 
the  "magazine  section,"  he  is  permitted  to  say 
a  word  or  two  about  "literature  as  a  career" 
and  other  imbecilities  which  it  happens  to  be 
convenient  at  the  moment  to  lay  upon  his  lips. 

Not  so  long  ago  William  Dean  Howells 
received  a  pretty  and  becoming  tribute  from 
his  fellows  in  literature  and  the  arts.  It  was 
an  event,  American  in  character,  literary  in 
its  interest,  important  as  an  item  of  news.  A 
few  of  our  newspapers  did  pay  a  little  attention 
to  the  episode,  but  the  vast  majority  ignored 
it  completely  as  an  item  of  the  day's  news.  I 
cannot  say  that  I  was  surprised  by  this.  At 
or  about  this  time  one  of  England's  "great" 
writers — in  an  American  newspaper  office 
greatness  in  literature  is  decided  by  London — 
made  an  ordinary  remark.  It  was  sent  here 

17 


William  Dean  Howells 

by  cable  as  part  of  the  day's  news.  It  formed 
the  subject  of  much  editorial  reflection.  The 
British  author  who  said  this  ordinary  thing  is 
on  a  level  with  the  Britons  whose  "poems"  are 
occasionally  cabled  here  and  printed  on  the 
front  pages  of  our  daily  morning  gazettes. 
For  nothing  can  shake  the  conviction  of  the 
American  newspaper  man,  apparently,  that  all 
the  "great  writers"  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  world 
are  British  subjects. 

By  a  coincidence  it  happens  that  not  only 
is  the  supreme  artist  among  novelists  using 
the  English  language  an  American,  but  the 
supreme  artist  among  critics  as  well.  I  have 
looked  vainly  through  the  columns  which  in 
newspapers  are  called  "literary"  for  any  allu 
sions,  the  very  slightest,  to  his  really  striking 
and  original  views  even  when  topics  are  upper 
most  upon  which  among  the  judicious  he  is  a 
most  high  authority.1  Second-rate  Britons 
will  be  quoted  with  all  the  deference  due  to  a 
writer  of  the  rank  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

1 1  refer  to  William  Crary  Brownell. 

18 


A  Paradox 


Newspaper  "literature"  is  thus  about  as  valu 
able  as  newspaper  "science."  This  paradox 
of  newspaper  "literature"  is  easily  explained. 
The  "literary"  columns  of  our  newspapers 
comprise,  speaking  generally,  a  device  for  the 
procuration  of  publishers'  advertisements,  and 
of  patronage  of  a  kindred  nature.  No  one 
with  a  feeling  for  literature  as  related  to  life 
has  to  be  told  that  a  few  of  our  newspapers 
cherish  a  literary  tradition  with  a  sense  of 
responsibility  to  a  more  or  less  literary  constit 
uency.  Such  newspapers  not  only  review 
books  ably  and  impartially,  they  make  an  effort 
to  relate  literature  in  some  practical  way  to 
the  lives  of  their  readers.  This  is  the  detail 
that  is  so  fatal  to  our  newspapers  in  general. 
If  a  publisher  took  it  into  his  head  to  ask  the 
average  newspaper  what  it  had  ever  done  to 
relate  literature  to  the  daily  life  of  the  com 
munity,  he  would  be  referred  in  all  simplicity 
to  the  "literary"  columns.  These  columns, 
aside  from  their  main  purpose  in  procuring 
publishers'  advertisements,  have  the  incidental 

19 


William  Dean  Howells 

effect  of  confirming  the  popular  impression 
that  "literature"  is  remote  and  aloof  from  the 
practical  realities  of  everyday  life,  an  "elegant 
thing  to  have"  but  on  the  whole  dull  and  unin 
telligible  when  it  can  be  viewed  seriously  at  all. 

Above  the  braying  Philistinism  of  the  only 
literary  atmosphere  American  newspapers 
know  anything  about  ride  those  radiant  angels, 
the  popular  novelists  and  playwrights  of  Lon 
don,  whose  pontifical  right  to  speak  infallibly 
on  a  question  of  faith  or  morals  is  so  well 
known  to  our  mobs. 

All  this  would  be  a  spiritual  as  well  as  an  in 
tellectual  tragedy  even  if,  as  our  business  men 
say,  there  were  "money  in  it."  The  curious 
part  of  this  newspaper  crusade  for  publishers' 
advertisements  is  the  fact  that,  in  the  long  run, 
there  is  no  money  in  it.  There  is  no  money  in 
it  because  publishing  in  our  land  is  based  for 
the  most  part  upon  a  theory  fundamentally 
false,  and  historically  absurd,  an  assumption 
that  flies  in  the  face  of  human  experience. 
This  error  of  theory,  this  wrong  assumption  is 

20 


Literature  and  Life 

that  an  alien  literature  can  be  related  in  any 
proper  sense  to  the  life  of  the  American  people. 
Our  publishing  houses  have  no  literary  con 
stituencies  at  all.  They  can  sell  sets  of  this 
standard  author  or  that  reference  book.  They 
flounder  in  the  task  of  finding  an  audience  and 
they  invariably  seek  not  their  own  audience  but 
the  audience  of  somebody  else.  The  author 
who  gets  attention  in  a  publishing  house  is  he 
who  walks  in  with  an  audience,  a  following,  a 
buying  constituency.  It  matters  little  what 
kind  of  a  constituency  it  may  be.  The  pub 
lisher  himself  either  has  no  constituency  of  his 
own  or  he  has  bled  it  white.  And  that  constit 
uency,  as  I  said,  is  not  a  literary  one  at  all, 
properly  speaking. 

The  only  important  literary  constituency  we 
have  is  that  body  of  native  Americans  of 
Anglo-Saxon  origin  to  whom  the  contempo 
rary  literature  of  Britain  arrives  in  the  trap 
pings  and  with  the  glamor  still  upon  it  of  the 
age  of  Elizabeth,  of  the  Georgian  period,  of 
the  mid- Victorian  era.  These  people  have  no 

21 


William  Dean  Howells 

means  of  knowing  that  the  literature  of  Eng 
land  is  living  to-day  on  the  prestige  of  its  own 
past.  This  explains  how  Britons  of  no  genius 
emerge  so  radiantly  in  the  "literary"  columns 
of  our  newspapers.  They  want  the  publishers' 
advertisement,  those  newspapers  do!  The 
same  aching  desire  accounts  for  the  flood  of 
Russians  in  translation.  Russians  have  writ 
ten  some  good  stories.  When  the  "important 
young  Englishman"  trick  was  played  to  death 
in  New  York  publishing  houses,  and  when  the 
pose  of  the  London  playwright  in  his  capacity 
as  sovereign  pontiff  seemed  solemn  only  in  a 
Sunday  newspaper,  the  Russian  game  was 
revived.  Statements  of  a  preposterous  charac 
ter  about  these  Russian  writers  began  to 
appear  in  the  newspapers.  The  fact  is  that 
most  of  these  Russian  novels  that  have  come  to 
us  in  recent  years  are  unreadable  but  our  col 
lege  professors  dare  not  say  so  lest  they  be 
thought  deficient  in  the  "critical"  faculty. 
The  newspaper  men,  as  a  rule,  dare  not  say  it 
for  very  obvious  reasons,  even  if  their  opinions 

22 


A  Trick 


had  importance.  Russian  novelists  will  con 
tinue  to  be  treated  in  that  pompous,  stilted 
fashion  of  reviewing  which  some  newspaper  men 
catch  from  the  circulars  sent  to  them  by  the 
publishers.  There  has  been  a  development  of 
this  trick  in  recent  years.  An  ambitious  book 
let  will  be  sent  to  the  reviewers  and  in  it  they 
can  read  about  the  "greatness"  of  "the  master." 
A  "great"  English  "master"  plays  this  trick  by 
writing  a  book  about  some  literary  acquaint 
ance  of  his  who  is  also  "great."  The  thing  is 
done  in  the  most  serious  way  imaginable  and 
the  newspaper  men  here  take  it  seriously. 

There  is  with  ourselves,  too,  a  prejudice 
against  "literary  men,"  who  are  assumed  to  be 
absurd  persons.  They  reflect  back  upon  liter 
ature  itself  a  shade  of  their  own  absurdity. 
Literature  is  accordingly  left  to  "ladies"  or 
perhaps  I  ought  to  say  to  women  and  children. 
I  am  personally  acquainted  with  "literary" 
men  who  deliberately  use  strong  oaths  and 
strong  cigars  and  frequent  bar  rooms  for  the 
sake  of  seeming  manly.  It  is  all  part  of  a  per- 

23 


William  Dean  Howells 

fectly  ridiculous  state  of  mind.  These  men 
are  posing.  As  a  part  of  this  pose  we  have 
the  disdain  of  our  literature  which  affects  to 
regard  it  as  second  rate,  which  asks  again  and 
again  when  that  "great  American  novel"  will 
be  written,  which  snatches  up  every  light  and 
unconsidered  trifle  coming  to  us  from  abroad, 
which  declines  to  take  seriously  even  so  great 
a  writer  as  William  Dean  Howells. 

He  was  never  discovered  in  Europe.  That 
is  why  we  do  not  rank  him  among  the  supreme 
literary  artists,  like  Poe,  for  instance.  I  am 
well  aware  of  the  fact  that  the  work  of  Howells 
is  enjoyed  in  England,  that  he  is  known  on  the 
continent  of  Europe  itself  as  an  author. 
Howells  has  never,  for  all  that,  been  "esti 
mated"  by  the  English.  That  is  because  he  is 
an  artist  and  in  literature  the  English  are  not 
artists,  Dickens,  for  example,  is  not  a  literary 
artist,  although  he  is  a  great  novelist.  An 
thony  Trollope  is  not  a  literary  artist,  although 
he,  too,  is  a  great  novelist.  The  artist  in  liter 
ature  is  found  chiefly  among  the  French.  The 

24 


Great  Writing 

literary  artist  must  not  be  confused  with  the 
"great  writer,"  although  "great"  writing  is 
essential  to  the  effect  of  inspired  artistry  in 
literature. 

That  word  "artist"  is  as  dreadful  in  its  im 
plications  as  is  the  word  "literature"  itself.  It 
implies  that  Howells  must  be  "above  the  heads" 
of  most  of  us.  The  supreme  artist  is  never 
above  the  heads  of  the  multitude.  His  meth 
ods  may  be  superseded.  The  qualities  which 
gave  him  his  hold  upon  the  hearts  and  the  ad 
miration  of  his  contemporaries  may  not  endear 
him  to  us.  He  may  be  despised  by  the  aristo 
crats  and  worshipped  by  the  mob.  Hokusai  is 
an  instance  of  this.  The  great  artist  of  the 
color  print  was  scorned  by  all  courtiers.  To 
this  day  the  arbiters  of  Japanese  "taste"  do  not 
give  him  the  highest  rank.  It  will  be  recalled 
that  Shakespeare,  who  never  got  above  the 
heads  of  the  crowd  in  the  pit  of  the  Globe 
theater,  was  patronized  and  tolerated  by  the 
exponents  of  the  best  taste  in  his  own  time. 
There  was  a  schoolmaster  at  Athens  in  the  time 

25 


William  Dean  Howells 

of  Alcibiades  who  "corrected"  Homer  for  the 
benefit  of  his  pupils.  Alcibiades  gave  that 
schoolmaster  a  box  on  the  ear.  It  is  the  only 
sensible  way  to  deal  with  many  editors. 

There  is  no  occasion,  then,  to  dread  that 
word  "artist,"  or  that  word  "literature,"  or  to 
imagine  that  because  they  are  peculiarly  appro 
priate  in  any  consideration  of  the  work  of 
William  Dean  Howells  they  involve  something 
or  other  above  the  heads  of  people  or  heavy  or 
dull.  Especially  must  we  be  on  our  guard  lest 
any  prejudice  against  that  word  "American" 
incline  us  to  doubt  the  possibility  of  greatness  in 
one  of  our  own  writers  who  belongs  to  our  own 
day.  It  is  easy  enough  for  us  to  accept  the 
greatness  of  Poe  because  he  comes  to  us  forti 
fied  and  supported  by  the  critics  of  Europe. 
Had  Poe  never  been  discovered  by  the  French 
he  would  now,  I  am  persuaded,  be  quite  for 
gotten  by  all  but  the  discriminating  few  over 
here.  How  differently  they  manage  these 
things  in  France.  If  a  great  literary  artist 

26 


A  Great  Artist 

makes  his  appearance  there,  he  need  not  wait 
to  be  discovered  by  the  English. 

It  will  be  observed  that  William  Dean 
Howells  has  been  widely  read  in  his  own  coun 
try,  that  his  name  is  a  household  word  wher 
ever  books  are  appreciated.  Nevertheless,  his 
rank  as  a  literary  artist  is  not  discovered  among 
us.  The  average  American,  even  if  he  were 
highly  cultivated,  would  be  somewhat  surprised 
if  told  that  William  Dean  Howells  is  as  great 
a  literary  artist  as  Balzac,  greater  from  that 
point  of  view  than  Thackeray  or  George  Eliot 
or  Tolstoy,  or  Kipling.1  He  is  far  more  inter 
esting,  or,  as  the  critics  say,  compelling  than 
all  of  them.  Howells  has,  necessarily,  his 
atmosphere.  The  atmosphere  of  Howells  is 
characteristically  American.  The  atmosphere 
~oTT5aIzac  is  characteristically  French.  There 
are  in  Balzac  pages  and  pages  devoted  to  the 

i  These  things  are  matters  of  taste,  to  be  sure,  but  Rudyard 
Kipling  writes  very  badly  for  such  a  "great"  author,  doesn't 
he?  It  is  the  only  tendency  he  seems  to  me  to  share — now  and 
then— with  Shakespeare. 

27. 


William  Dean  Howells 

establishment  of  this  atmosphere.  Hence  he 
is  unreadable  when  his  art  is  not  at  its  summit. 
In  Howells  this  atmosphere  is  created  with 
more  subtlety,  with  more  art.  Howells  never 
has  those  unreadable  pages — unreadable  to  an 
alien  mind,  that  is  to  say.  In  the  matter  of 
control  over  his  art,  in  the  detail  of  touch,  feel 
ing,  intimacy,  Howells  is  finer  than  Balzac 
although  Balzac  has  terrific  characters,  terrible 
vices,  terrifying  climaxes,  and  Howells  does 
not  deal  in  such  things.  This  is  but  a  way  of 
saying  that  Balzac  is  faithful  to  the  Gallic  tem 
perament,  the  French  environment,  his  milieu, 
and  that  Howells  reflects  what  Henry  James 
calls  the  American  scene. 

Balzac  has  again,  as  all  European  literary 
artists  have,  the  enormous  advantage  of  an 
adequate  criticism.  There  is  no  prejudice  in 
France  against  French  literature  just  because 
it  happens  to  be  French.  The  critic  in  the 
country  of  Balzac  is  not  afraid  to  proclaim  the 
greatness  of  his  country's  literature.  There  is 
no  "mother  country"  to  daunt  him.  Howells 

28 


Our  Fear 


labors  under  the  disadvantage  of  the  national 
attitude  to  American  literature.  Nobody 
dares  to  say  how  great  a  literary  artist  he  is.1 
We  are  afraid  the  English  will  laugh  at  us. 
Moreover,  it  is  not  now  our  national  habit. 
We  do  not  make  the  eagle  scream  any  more. 
Mr.  Jefferson  Brick  has  left  the  field  of  criti 
cism  to  Mr.  William  Crary  Brownell.2  There 
is  no  way  of  finding  out  who  is  great  in  litera 
ture  with  us,  even  from  the  standpoint  of  con 
temporaries.  The  patronizing  school  of  criti 
cism  is  too  powerful.  There  is  something  posi 
tively  artless  in  the  sophistication  of  our  every 
day,  ordinary  book  reviewers,  to  say  nothing  of 
our  critics.  They  have  all  read  everything. 
They  are  very  much  like  our  dramatic  critics, 
who  are  perpetually  telling  us  that  the  sus 
picious  old  uncle  striving  to  conceal  a  pecca 
dillo  of  his  youth  is  a  "stock  figure"  on  the 

i  Except,  of  course,  myself.  I,  however,  do  not  count.  The 
English  never  heard  of  me. 

2 1  think  the  difference  between  these  two  is  the  same  as 
looking  first  through  one  end  of  the  telescope  and  then 
through  the  other. 

29 


William  Dean  Howells 

stage.  What  of  it?  If  any  playwright  can 
take  a  hackneyed  theme  and  thrill  me  with  it, 
well  and  good.  He  is  greater  than  the  drama 
tist  who  must  get  hold  of  a  new  idea,  "some 
thing  original." 


Ill 

THE   HOWELLS  AMERICAN 

A  MIRACLE  of  the  literary  art  of  Howells  is 
achieved  time  and  again  in  this  use  of  what  TO 
an  inexperienced  critic  might  seem  the  hack 
neyed.  Howells  never  consents  to  go  beyond 
the  facts  of  human  experience  for  his  material. 
His  art  rests  upon  life  as  we  Americans  live 
it.  He  has  no  adventitious  aids  in  the  form  of 
artificial  plots,  gods  out  of  machines,  climaxes. 
The  scene  is  commonplace.  The  conversation 
is  that  which  we  all  overhear.  The  types  are 
familiar.  The  effect  is  invariably  beautiful. 
It  seems  incredible  that  things  like  this  can 
happen  all  around  us  without  our  special  won 
der.  It  is  amazing  to  find  that  we  Americans 
can  be  so  interesting  in  our  dullness,  our  insip 
idity,  our  lack  of  the  picturesque  in  character, 
our  temperamental  destitution.  More  unex- 

31 


William  Dean  Howells 

pected  than  anything  else  is  the  discovery  that 
American  humor  is  in  its  essence  so  subtle,  so 
refined,  so  complex  and  yet  so  patent.  There 
is  an  impression  that  American  humor  is  a  form 
of  horseplay  when  it  is  not  wild  exaggeration. 
Howells  has  disproved  that  fallacy. 

Turning,  now,  from  Howells  the  literary 
artist  to  another  aspect  of  his  work  altogether, 
it  seems  to  me  that  he  has  understood  his 
countrymen,  the  essential  native  American, 
with  a  comprehensiveness  unexampled  in 
fiction.  Dickens  understood  the  English  in 
many  respects,  but  he  did  not  understand  his 
countrymen  through  and  through  as  Howells 
understands  Americans  through  and  through. 
For  instance,  Dickens  is  not  apparently  happy 
in  delineating  all  ranks  and  types  of  English 
men.  Howells  goes  from  the  bottom  of 
American  society  to  the  top  with  equal  ease 
although  not,  I  admit,  with  equal  sympathy. 
Here  again  he  suggests  Balzac.  The  culti 
vated  American  gentleman,  the  finished  Amer 
ican  lady,  the  country  bumpkin,  the  factory 

32 


Perfect  Art 

hand,  the  lawyer,  the  business  man,  the  writer, 
the  young  girl  of  good  position  in  society,  the 
maiden  from  the  rural  districts  who  must  go  to 
work  in  a  factory — Howells  knows  them  all. 
They  appear  before  us  with  all  the  distinctness 
of  fine  portraiture.  Their  talk  is  reported 
with  stenographic  accuracy.  They  could  step 
right  out  of  his  pages  into  a  Maine  village  or 
into  Boston  without  betraying  themselves 
because  they  all  ring  true.  Amazing  as  are 
their  adventures,  they  reflect  the  life  of  our 
country.  Faithfully,  on  the  other  hand,  as 
they  reflect  the  life  of  our  country,  they  are 
part  and  parcel  of  a  great  story.  We  see  right 
into  their  hearts,  their  lives.  There  is  an 
absurd  idea  among  a  class  of  critics  who  receive 
much  deference  on  this  subject  of  seeing 
through  the  outer  skin  of  a  character  into  the 
motives  within.  We  are  told  that  this  is  an 
impossibility.  The  novelist  ought  never  to 
know  what  is  going  on  in  the  minds  of  his  char 
acters.  This  would  be  a  valid  objection  to  the 
art  of  Howells  if  that  art  were  not  so  perfect. 

33 


William  Dean  Howells 

Howells  never  gets  "inside"  his  characters  un- 
convincingly.  He  follows  the  reflections  of  his 
characters  as  they  live  their  lives  only  within 
the  limits  of  actual  human  experience.  There 
are  people  whom  we  understand  so  completely 
that  we  can  see  what  is  going  on  in  their  minds 
as  they  talk  and  act  before  us.  The  mother 
can  read  her  daughter's  face  sometimes.  She 
can  not  do  so  always.  Howells  understands 
this  complexity  of  human  nature  and  he  never 
exceeds  the  limits  of  its  interpretation. 

We  are  established,  consequently,  upon  a 
footing  of  rare  intimacy  with  his  men,  his 
women,  his  youths  and  his  maidens.  The  in 
timacy  of  Howells,  nevertheless,  is  not  at  all 
like  the  intimacy  of  Thackeray.  It  has 
nothing  in  common  with  the  intimacy  of  Trol- 
lope,  who  addresses  himself  to  his  readers  to  ex 
plain  how  good  the  "show"  is  going  to  be. 
Howells  is  too  fine  an  artist  to  undertake  his 
effects  in  that  fashion.  Neither  does  he 
assume  any  familiarity  with  a  reader  by  an 
affectation  of  that  pertness  which  seduces  the 

34 


Distinction 


writers  of  department  store  advertisements 
occasionally  and  makes  the  announcement  of 
tailors  of  "ready  made"  trousers  a  display  of 
impertinence  to  possible  customers.  Howells 
is  a  master  of  the  distinguished  in  manner. 
He  is  reserved.  Nevertheless  he  has  an  effect 
of  intimacy  which  is  as  delightful  as  the  dis 
covery  that  some  casual  acquaintance,  un 
bosoming  himself  to  us  in  the  course  of  a  rail 
way  journey,  is  in  reality  the  President  of  the 
United  States.  It  is  an  intellectual  treat  in 
itself  to  realize  that  a  writer  so  easy  to  follow, 
so  simple  in  his  effects,  so  true  to  our  own 
knowledge  of  life  and  of  human  nature  and  so 
absorbing  in  the  interest  he  creates  is  at  the 
same  time  one  of  the  supreme  literary  artists. 
Such  is  the  effect  of  the  intimacy  of  Howells. 
He  has  the  distinction  of  style  denied  to  the  too 
prevalent  kind  of  contemporary  writer  who 
assumes  an  offensive  familiarity  of  tone  with 
his  reader. 

Here,  if  anywhere,  familiarity  breeds  con 
tempt.     The  tone  of  contemporary  style  in 

35 


William  Dean  Howells 

narrative  is  so  familiar  that  a  well  bred  reader 
might  take  offense  at  it. 

The  most  important  single  element  in  style 
is  strength  and  this  effect  of  strength  is  missed 
if  the  manner  be  too  intimate.  For  this  reason 
the  average  short  story  in  the  average  period 
ical  is  a  curiosity.  One  would  imagine  that 
the  love  of  a  woman  were  trivial  and  inconse 
quential,  the  style  in  which  the  theme  is  usually 
handled  being  so  vapid. 

Strength  of  style  should  be  accompanied  by 
beauty.  Many  writers  confuse  beauty  of  style 
with  mere  prettiness  of  style.  Prettiness  of 
style  leads  to  the  pitfall  of  intimacy. 

The  heresy  of  intimacy  in  style  arises  from  a 
fallacy  to  which  the  college  graduate  is  prone. 
He  thinks  the  masses  of  mankind  like  intimacy. 
The  inexperienced  politician  slaps  the  humble 
voter  on  the  back  with  the  cry:  "Hello,  Mike!" 
The  able  and  experienced  politician  approaches 
the  humble  voter  with  perfect  deference  and 
suggests  gravely:  "I  believe  I  have  the 
pleasure  of  addressing  Mr.  O'Flaherty?"  Of 

36 


Intimacy 


course,  one  must  do  this  sort  of  thing  with  a 
certain  sincerity  to  give  it  a  proper  effect. 

The  cure,  then,  of  the  present  defect  of  in 
timacy  in  style  is  a  more  dignified  introduction. 
No  writer,  in  an  introduction,  should  slap  a 
reader  on  the  back  and  hail  him  by  his  first 
name  and  this  is  vulgarity  into  which  the  in 
timacy  of  Howells  never  degenerates. 

All  this,  however,  is  by  way  of  thunder  in 
the  index,  my  own  introduction  to  the  subject. 


37 


IV 

THE  TECHNIQUE   OF   HOWELLS 

No  literary  artist  has  ever  used  the  English 
tongue  with  such  beauty  of  manner  in  the  novel 
as  William  Dean  Howells  attains  in  his  char 
acteristic  chapters.  Where  fiction  is  concerned, 
he  remains  one  of  the  few  lords  of  language. 

This  detail  calls  for  more  elucidation  than 
might  otherwise  be  necessary  owing  to  the  satu 
ration  of  the  American  mind  with  the  atmos 
phere  of  British  criticism.  The  Britons  pos 
sess  such  slight  aptitude  for  the  perception  of 
literary  values  that  they  have  still  to  discover 
the  decay  of  the  English  language  in  England. 

Let  us  glance  at  the  equipment  of  a  novelist 
as  something  to  be  distinguished  from  the 
equipment  of,  say,  a  historian.  I  am  speaking 
now  of  technique.  The  novelist  and  the  his 
torian  are  alike  in  that  both  must  have  style. 


Good  Style  and  Bad 

There  are  German  historians,  I  am  told,  who 
disdain  anything  in  the  nature  of  a  style.  They 
write  without  one.  A  historian  who  uses  the 
English  language  cannot  dispense  with  style, 
and  here,  to  repeat,  he  is  in  the  dilemma  of  the 
novelist,  the  fact  that  there  are  novelists  of 
execrable  style  merely  proving  the  point.  A 
historian,  however,  is  no  better  off  for  being  a 
master  of  dialogue,  whereas  in  a  novelist  some 
capacity  to  manage  dialogue  is  absolutely 
necessary.  Inferior  artistry  in  the  novel  is 
sure  to  manifest  itself  first  of  all  in  the  treat 
ment  of  dialogue. 

Plot,  it  may  be  supposed,  is  of  no  importance 
to  a  historian — at  any  rate  it  is  of  no  such 
critical  importance  to  him  as  it  is  to  the  novelist. 
That  theory  is  not  altogether  sound.  For  ex 
ample,  the  tremendous  height  in  the  conquest 
of  Mexico  is  scaled  by  him  who  follows  the 
story  when  Cortez  comes  back,  and  all  before 
this  episode  is  but  a  preparation  of  the  reader 
of  Prescott  for  that  final  crash  of  the  Aztec 
world.  This  is  finely  observed  by  Harry 

39 


William  Dean  Howells 

Thurston  Peck  in  a  little  study  of  Prescott  that 
all  Americans  should  read  and  that  all  of  them 
ignore.  In  Gibbon,  again,  the  long  Roman 
history  is  synthesized  around  an  idea  of  a  de 
cline  and  fall.  A  historian  who  neglects  a 
general  idea  as  the  thread  with  which  to  bind 
his  episodes  together  will  grow  dusty  on  a  back 
shelf.  The  corresponding  thing  in  a  novelist  is 
plot. 

The  historian  and  the  novelist  both  must  be 
able  to  delineate  character. 

I  am  of  the  opinion,  finally,  that  the  novelist 
and  the  historian  are  most  alike  in  their  vital 
need  of  an  art  of  narration.  The  tale  may  be 
ever  so  good,  but  if  neither  the  novelist  nor  the 
historian  have  the  ability  to  tell  it,  there  might 
as  well  be  no  tale  at  all.  The  English,  whose 
criticism  of  literature  is  a  display  of  lack  of  in 
sight  when  it  is  not  borrowed  from  others, 
cherish  a  delusion  on  this  subject  of  plot. 
They  say  that  before  a  novelist  can  tell  a  story 
he  must  have  a  story  to  tell.  That  proposition 
was  put  before  us  by  Anthony  Trollope.  It 

40 


Narrative 


was  received  by  ourselves  with  all  the  deference 
we  have  for  the  imbecilities  of  the  Britons  on 
the  subject  of  literature,  although  it  is  a  well 
known  fact  that  Sir  Walter  Scott  would  begin 
a  novel  with  no  idea  at  all  of  how  he  was  going 
to  continue  it,  to  say  nothing  of  ending  it.  No 
matter  how  good  a  plot  may  be,  a  novelist  will 
spoil  it  if  he  lack  a  mastery  of  the  narrative  art. 
He  may  conceal  the  deficiency  behind  a  blaze 
of  brilliant  dialogue.  He  may  atone  for  it 
through  the  subtlety  of  his  delineation  of  char 
acter.  He  can  force  us  to  blink  his  deficiency 
by  a  display  of  gifts  that  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  technique  of  his  craft — the  sense  of 
humor,  for  example.  The  fact  remains  that  a 
mastery  of  the  art  of  narration  is  essential  to 
greatness  in  a  novelist. 

This  mastery  of  the  narrative  art  is  the  con 
spicuous  characteristic  of  the  novels  of  William 
Dean  Howells.  His  dialogue,  his  analysis  of 
mood  and  of  temperament,  his  use  of  episode, 
his  observations  on  the  subject  of  woman — 
everything  in  a  novel  of  his  will  be  found  in 

41 


William  Dean  Howells 

strict  subordination  to  narrative.  He  makes 
it  his  business  to  follow  the  progress  of  events, 
and  we  go  with  him,  or  rather  we  are  carried 
along.  His  method  is  a  happy  illustration  of 
the  imbecility  of  those  critics  who  tell  us  there 
are  no  "plots"  in  real  life,  no  isolated  episodes, 
that  is  to  say,  nothing  rounded  out  and  com 
plete  in  itself,  after  the  fashion  of  a  novelist's 
constructed  tale.  The  truth  is  that  life  affords 
these  things  abundantly.  They  stun  us  with 
their  "art,"  their  resemblance  to  a  Greek  play, 
an  Italian  comedy,  a  gay  French  novel.  Ev 
erything  is  to  be  found  in  life  as  we  live  it, 
including  the  complicated  and  mechanical  plots 
of  dear  Wilkie  Collins.1  All  this  is  known  to 

i  By  the  way,  I  can  not  pass  the  name  of  Wilkie  Collins 
without  protesting  against  current  English  disparagement  of 
his  genius.  I  agree  with  every  word  of  Swinburne's  praise  of 
him.  The  statement  that  Wilkie  Collins  could  not  delineate 
character  is  preposterous.  His  Lydia  Gwilt  in  "Armadale" 
is  the  most  subtle  revelation  of  a  certain  type  of  woman  in 
all  fiction.  His  Horatio  Wragge  in  "No  Name"  is  a  master 
piece  of  humorous  character  sketching.  I  do  not  regard  "The 
Woman  in  White,"  wonderful  as  it  is,  as  the  greatest  of  the 
novels  of  Wilkie  Collins.  That  place  is  held  by  "Armadale," 
one  of  the  supremely  strong  things  in  literature. 


42 


Climax 


Howells,  but  he  exploits  the  fact  with  the  true 
artist's  restraint.  No  novelist  of  his  rank  neg 
lects  the  melodramatic  more  serenely.  No 
novelist  invests  every  day  life  with  such  excite 
ment.  The  excitement  may  be  subdued  but  it 
is  genuine.  The  cunning  of  the  art  of  Howells 
in  narration  achieves  always  the  effect  of  a 
series  of  events  rising,  rising,  rising,  to  a  con 
summation,  towards  a  catastrophe,  up  a  Cal 
vary. 


43 


A  STUDY  IN   SUBTLETY 

>THE  achievement  of  an  effect  like  this  out  of 
such  material  as  is  afforded  by  the  domestic 
affairs  of  native  Americans  of  Anglo-Saxon 
origin  is  proof  of  the  supremacy  of  Howells  in 
narrative.  There  is  a  soul  of  circumstance  in 
life  from  day  to  day,  an  indefinable  and  in 
tangible  something  in  even  a  long  monotony 
that  kills,  and  this  soul,  this  something  never 
pervades  a  Howells  situation.  This  most  sub 
tle  seizure  of  the  spirit  of  a  human  affair  and  its 
exposure  in  a  fiction  may  be  likened  to  the  work 
of  one  of  those  masters  of  line  drawing— "alas! 
too  few" — who  reveal  an  unexpected  and  un 
detected  charm  in  an  old  and  familiar  street. 
A  miracle  of  that  sort  is  worked  because  the 
artist  had  a  vision  in  the  first  place,  but  he  could 

44 


Realism 


not  pass  his  vision  on  to  us  without  adequacy 
of  technique.  The  adequacy  of  the  Howells 
technique  is  shown  by  the  unpromising  and 
difficult  nature  of  the  raw  material.  It  is  im 
possible  to  rise  from  the  perusal  of  a  Howells 
novel  like  "April  Hopes"  without  a  feeling  of 
blank  amazement  at  the  tragical,  comical, 
operatical,  fantastical  qualities  of  humdrum 
and  conventional  American  existence  pre 
sented  in  narrative  form  with  unsparing 
realism.  The  soul  of  it  all  he  will  not  seize. 
The  real  magic  of  the  narrative  art  of  How 
ells  is  apparent  when  an  effort  is  made  to  recall 
a  story  he  has  told.  It  is  not  easy  to  explain 
the  breathlessness  of  the  interest  with  which  the 
suspense  has  been  attended.  No  eccentricity 
of  character  arrested  us,  for  Howells  knows 
neither  fiends  in  human  shape  nor  angels  on  the 
earth.  There  are  no  mysteries  of  the  detective 
school  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  Radcliffe  sort  on 
the  other.  The  business  of  the  apparitions  in 
"The  Undiscovered  Country"  is  disposed  of  in 
the  least  sensational  manner  imaginable.  The 

45 


William  Dean  Howells 

author  insists  upon  a  dry,  cool,  matter  of  fact, 
well  bred,  detached  remoteness  from  the  ghosts. 
His  realism  is  without  partisanship.  With 
what  a  poetry  of  effect  the  whole  episode  is 
brought  off!  Egeria,  those  apparitions,  her 
preposterous  Papa — the  darling,  ridiculous,  in 
efficient  man! — their  flight  in  the  snow,  the 
journalistic  literary  man  Ford,  the  Shakers  in 
their  community,  swim  in  an  ocean  of  poetry, 
in  spite  of  all!  That  is  because  "The  Un 
discovered  Country"  is  a  love  story. 

The  love  story,  the  tale  of  love,  that  is  the 
specialty  of  Howells.  His  narrative  art  has 
all  love  for  its  province,  the  love  of  which  the 
poets  are  full,  that  wonderful,  authentic  love 
which  has  come  down  to  us  untarnished  and  un 
stained  from  the  days  of  Hero  and  Leander. 
This  is  what  Howells  is  all  about — Cupid  and 
Psyche.  The  impression  is  all  the  more  vivid 
because  his  attitude  is  essentially  scientific. 
He  deals  with  the  American  woman  after  the 
fashion  or,  to  be  strictly  accurate,  in  the  spirit 
of  Henri  Fabre  reporting  the  progress  of 

46 


More  Reporting 

events  among  the  spiders  and  the  beetles  and 
the  butterflies  of  France.  The  effect  of  a 
highly  scientific  accuracy  conveyed  by  Howells 
in  "reporting"  his  heroines  is  the  great  miracle 
of  his  narrative  manner. 

It  is  a  manner  which  has  all  the  elements  well 
in  hand,  with  an  eye  to  the  fine  effect  of  the 
whole.  Love  is  that  effect.  The  atmosphere 
of  love  saturates  the  waves  even  in  that  most 
unusual  of  all  tales  of  the  sea,  "The  Lady  of 
the  Aroostook."  A  coarse  man  might  miss  the 
subtlety,  the  delicacy,  the  gossamer  weave  of 
that  divine  thing,  but  no  artist,  and,  above  all, 
no  woman  with  any  heart  and  any  intuition 
could  miss  the  sweetness,  the  ravishing  sweet 
ness,  of  it  all.  There  are  a  hundred  subtleties 
in  that  story,  and  how  simple  it  remains.  The 
very  storm  is  attuned  to  the  love  arising  in  a 
man's  heart  for  Lydia — yet  it  is  so  real  a  ship, 
that  Aroostook,  and  no  mere  painted  ship  upon 
a  painted  ocean.  Howells  is  so  perfect  a  mas 
ter  of  the  narrative  side  of  his  art  that  he  can 
yield  to  no  temptation  to  play  Captain  Mar- 

47 


William  Dean  Howells 

ryat.    It  is  a  love  story;  with  the  sea  subordi 
nate  to  love. 

The  peculiar  genius  of  Howells  as  studied 
from  this  point  of  view  displays  itself  with  most 
consummate  power  and  with  most  consummate 
art  in  dialogue.  Mark  Twain — I  think  it  was 
he — drew  attention  years  ago  to  the  purely 
technical  side  of  the  skill  with  which  Howells 
phrases  the  accompaniments  of  conversation 
and  transacts  the  rhetorical  business  of  it. 
There  is  no  following  of  precedent  in  the  use 
of  expressions  like  "she  said,"  or  "he  rejoined." 
Not  that  Howells  so  tortures  our  language,  in 
the  fashion  of  his  imitators,  as  to  allow  himself 
the  expression  that  "she  agonized,"  when  the 
idea  to  be  conveyed  is  simply  that  she  uttered 
her  words  in  a  tone  appropriate  to  the  sensation 
of  agony.  Howells  has  been  imitated  to  the 
point  of  caricature  by  literary  ladies  where  this 
detail  is  concerned,  and  particularly  by  writers 
of  the  short  story.  He  is  the  inventor  of  a 
prose  technique  in  this  detail  alone  which  is  no 
less  remarkable  than  the  departure  of  the  Brit- 

48 


Art  of  Writing 

ish  poets  from  the  couplet  of  Pope.  It  is 
interesting,  by  the  way,  that  no  striking  ad 
vance  in  the  art  of  writing  fiction  on  the  side 
of  its  technique  has  taken  place  since  the  arrival 
of  Howells.  In  England  the  writing  of  Eng 
lish,  viewed  as  an  art,  has  distinctly  declined, 
precisely  as  in  Canada  and  in  Australia  the  art 
of  writing  English  has  distinctly  advanced. 
In  no  land,  however,  that  enjoys  the  English 
language  has  an  artist  in  the  technique  of 
fiction  worthy  of  comparison  with  Howells 
made  his  appearance  since  the  writing  of  "The 
Rise  of  Silas  Lapham." 

Dialogue  in  Howells  serves  to  carry  on  the 
business  of  narration,  to  develop  the  plot. 
Plot  with  him  depends  sometimes  upon  the 
friction  of  circumstance  aggravated  by  the 
effect  of  one  type  of  character  upon  another. 
Catastrophe  looms.  Love  is  always  with  us. 
In  his  transmutation  of  these  baser  elements 
into  the  pure  gold  of  his  characteristic  dialogue, 
the  creator  of  Silas  Lapham,  of  Marcia  Hub- 
bard,  of  Lydia  Blood,  of  Doctor  Boynton,  of 

49 


William  Dean  Howells 

Annie  Kilburn  lets  us  into  many  secrets  of  talk. 
There  is  nothing  quite  so  wonderful  as  the 
conversations  proceeding  in  the  chapters  of 
Howells,  nothing  quite  so  complex,  nothing 
quite  so  dangerous  in  its  implications.  Yet 
nothing  could  be  simpler,  either,  or  better  bred 
or  in  stricter  accord  with  the  social  obligations 
imposed  upon  ladies  and  gentlemen.  If  there 
be  procurable  outside  of  the  novels  of  Howells 
any  such  course  of  instruction  in  the  art  of  con 
versation  as  may  be  had  within  them,  I  have 
missed  it. 

The  miracle  of  all  this  is  in  the  simple  work 
ing  of  it.  We  are  never  fatigued  by  the  intel 
lectuality  of  any  heroine,  or  bored  by  a  profes 
sor.  Doctor  Boynton's  elucidations  of  the 
materialized  essences  result  merely  in  disclosing 
himself.  Nor  is  the  dramatic  quality  of  a 
situation  sacrificed  for  the  sake  of  elucidating 
character  in  this  fashion.  Neither  will  How 
ells  lower  his  art  to  the  level  of  mere  caricature. 
The  exquisite  girl  who  in  "Indian  Summer" 
persists  in  loving  that  middle  aged  gentleman 

50 


Love 

so  madly  is  amusing  but  the  sacred  quality  of 
the  flame  upon  the  altar  of  her  temperament 
rescues  her  from  ridicule.  No  doubt  the  some 
thing  or  other  that  is  spiritualized  and  unique 
in  the  American  soul  is  reflected  here,  but  to 
the  art  of  Howells  and  to  that  alone  must  credit 
be  given  for  the  flavor  of  this  thing  in  our 
literature.  He  brought  the  American  concep 
tion  of  love  into  literature.  He  made  it  real 
and  convincing  with  his  dialogue,  saturated 
with  love,  poetical  on  account  of  love,  and  yet 
paradoxically  sensible  and  real.  Who  sus 
pected,  before  Howells  wrote,  say,  "April 
Hopes,"  that  the  ordinary  talk  of  American 
lovers  resembled  that  of  the  angels?  And 
what  is  there  in  all  the  dialogue  of  Jane  Austen 
to  compare  in  the  refinement  and  perfection 
of  its  humor,  with  the  episode  of  the  coffee  pot 
in  that  same  "April  Hopes"? 

And  as  all  dialogue  in  Howells  is  the  instru 
ment  of  his  art  in  narration,  his  powers  of 
description  subserve  the  purpose  of  getting  his 
story  told.  In  no  masterpiece  of  his — I  am 

51 


William  Dean  Howells 

speaking  of  the  great  novels — are  we  detained 
by  gratuitous  rapture  over  scenery.  When 
the  atmosphere  of  the  tale,  the  heart  of  its  mys 
tery,  must  be  plucked  out  of  the  New  England 
air,  we  are  made  to  breathe  it — but  always  in 
terms  of  a  personal  and  human  interest. 
There  is  not  in  jfijjjytolejrange  of  English 
fictiSn,  f cfr  fcxamplOtpintiiDduction  to  a  novel 
comparable  iij  beauty  with  th^opening  chap 
ter  of  "A  Moderr^Instance."  Its  effect  is  due, 
not  to  the  perfection  of  the  prose  in  which  the 
river  and  the  plain  are  brought  under  our  eyes, 
perfect  as  that  prose  is,  but  to  the  suggestion 
of  the  human  presence,  the  premonition  of  the 
tale  that  is  to  come.  There  is  a  heroine  haunt 
ing  these  woods.  The  boughs  of  the  tree  are 
dripping  with  her  love!  This  is  the  mood  of 
the  scenery  in  Howells.  The  snow  is  white 
with  love.  Howells  is  a  romanticist  always, 
his  method  alone  being  realistic.  We  see  this 
most  clearly  in  "The  Undiscovered  Country," 
where  the  disappearing  snow  and  the  truant 
spring  and  the  reeling  summer  and  the  shame- 

52 


Interpretation 

less  autumn  are  all  drunk  with  love.  But  they 
keep  their  distance,  they  know  their  place, 
which  is  that  of  chorus,  of  cup  bearer,  in  some 
instances  of  invited  guest.  In  this  aspect  of 
the  art  of  Howells,  "The  Undiscovered  Coun 
try"  is  the  most  poetical  of  all  novels.1 

The  structure  of  a  Howells  novel,  then,  af 
fords  a  striking  impression^  of  unity.  He 
makes  one  think  of  those  stage  managers  by 
whom  no  detail  is  neglected.  The  instrumen 
tality  upon  which  Howells  relies  conspicuously 
is,  indeed,  his  style.  It  is  a  style  so  soft,  so 
smooth,  so  rich,  so  warm,  that  it  makes  one 
think  of  velvet.  The  resources  of  the  English 
language  are  for  the  first  time  fully  uncovered 
for  the  purposes  of  fiction  by  this  discreet  and 
aristocratic  style.  But  that  style  alone  must 
have  left  Howells  a  stylist  and  only  that.  His 
equipment  in  the  technical  elements  of  his  voca- 

i  This  is  not  at  all  the  view  which  Howells  takes  of  himself. 
He  has  striven  in  his  book  on  "Criticism  and  Fiction"  to  prove 
himself  a  realist.  However  no  artist  is  competent  to  interpret 
himself,  to  say  what  he  stands  for.  He  can  not  be  his  own 
interpreter. 

53 


William  Dean  Howells 

tion  goes  beyond  the  detail  of  style.  It  ex 
tends  to  the  difficulty  of  dialogue,  the  subtlety 
of  descriptive  effect,  the  task  of  differentiating 
character  from  character,  the  business  of  get 
ting  on  with  the  story,  whatever  that  story  may 
be.  The  supreme  gift  of  all  in  the  novelist  is 
constructive  and  here  Howells  reveals  the 
measure  of  his  greatness.  He  synthesizes  with 
the  science  of  the  chemist.  He  holds  his  crea 
tion  together  by  maintaining  that  perfect 
balance  of  all  factors  which  is  the  secret  of  the 
equilibrium  of  the  universe,  as  well  as  of  the 
success  of  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham."  This 
is  why  the  technique  of  William  Dean  Howells 
surpasses  that  of  any  other  novelist. 


VI 

THE   PURITY   OF   THE   WOMEN   OF   HOWELLS 

IN  what  school  of  human  experience  Wil 
liam  Dean  Howells  acquired  his  knowledge  of 
the  heart  and  soul  of  woman  is  not  obvious. 
No  doubt,  he  had  from  the  very  beginning  a 
special  faculty  for  this  kind  of  study.  More 
over,  it  is  the  business  of  the  novelist  to  know 
women  well.  A  novelist  may  be  great  and 
yet  know  surprisingly  little  about  women.  A 
novelist,  in  fact,  may  be  a  woman  and  portray 
her  sex  inadequately.  A  lady  novelist  rarely 
affords  us  a  comprehensive  view  of  any  fem 
inine  character. 

An  arresting  f  eature  of  the  work  of  William 
Dean  Howells  is  the  fact  that  a  writer  who 
knows  women  so  well  should  find  them  so  good. 
It  is  even  more  remarkable  that  a  novelist  who 

55 


William  Dean  Howells 

finds  women  so  good  can  make  them  so  interest 
ing.  A  "great"  novelist — and  we  Americans 
derive  our  idea  of  "greatness"  in  a  novelist 
meekly  from  England — excels  usually  in  por 
trayal  of  vile  women.  Vile  women  are  often 
amazingly  interesting.  Good  women  are  even 
more  interesting,  more  powerful,  more  com 
plex. 

A  young  woman  who  enters  upon  the  liter 
ary  career  is  sometimes  confronted  with  a 
plausible  fallacy  on  the  subject  of  "life."  The 
thing  called  "life"  involves  standards  of  con 
duct.  Of  these  there  are  two — the  man's  and 
the  woman's.  The  man's  standard  of  conduct, 
a  woman  is  told,  gives  him  that  experience  of 
"life"  which  his  works  reflect.  If  Shakespeare 
and  Goethe,  Heine  and  de  Musset,  had  con 
formed  to  the  standards  of  morality  prescribed 
for  woman  their  works  could  not  have  been 
written.  If  her  purpose  be  serious,  then,  a 
woman  who  has  taken  to  "literature"  must  ex 
change  her  morality  for  that  of  the  Byrons  and 
the  Baudelaires. 

56 


Living  Life 

I  have  heard  this  kind  of  argument,  now  and 
then,  on  the  lips  of  women  who  hoped  to  be 
singers.  Live  life!  I  believe  that  is  the  for 
mula.  I  have  no  means  of  knowing  the  extent 
to  which  this  view  prevails  to-day  among  our 
literary  women.  It  comes  to  the  surface  occa 
sionally  in  the  discussions  of  the  hour.  The 
fallacy  upon  which  it  rests  arises  from  a  mis 
conception  of  the  real  nature  of  greatness  in 
literature. 

Greatness  in  literature  is  the  result  either  of 
the  artistry  of  a  genius  or  of  his  spiritual  in 
sight.  A  poet  is  found  now  and  then  who  to 
consummate  artistry  adds  the  keenest  spiritual 
insight.  Dante  is  an  illustration.  Milton  af 
fords  us  another.  The  difference  between  the 
genius  of  artistry  and  the  genius  of  spiritual 
insight  is  best  revealed  by  a  comparison  of  Poe 
with  Wordsworth.  Poe  is  a  much  greater  artist 
than  Wordsworth  but  Wordsworth  is  a  much 
greater  poet  than  Poe.  The  astonishing  thing 
in  Poe  is  the  fact  that  an  artist  of  his  blazing 
genius  should  be  so  destitute  of  spiritual  in- 

57 


William  Dean  Howells 

sight.  He  seems  never  to  have  seen  that  water 
turned  into  wine.  He  knew  of  eternal  streams, 
and  he  believed  in  ethereal  dances.  Beauty  is 
the  echo  of  the  songs  of  the  angels  or  the  com 
binations  of  color  effected  by  the  flutter  of 
their  wings.  Beauty  is  music.  But  Poe  has 
no  suspicion  of  a  region  above  and  beyond 
beauty — of  the  thing  we  shall  behold  when  the 
curtain  that  we  call  life  is  lifted  for  the  great 
performance  of  the  masterpiece  of  God.  We 
see  at  once  that  Poe  has  not  only  never  been 
behind  the  scenes,  but  has  his  doubts  on  the  sub- 
ject  of  the  "show"  that  is  to  come.  With  how 
rare  an  artistry  he  puts  those  doubts!  He  is 
filled  with  despair  himself,  and  this  despair  of 
the  "show"  would  disperse  the  audience  before 
ever  the  curtain  lifted  if  we  did  not  realize  in 
some  subtle  fashion  that  Poe  lacks  spiritual  in 
sight.  We  admire  the  despair  of  Poe  because 
it  is  beautiful.  To  object  to  Poe  because  he 
has  no  "message"  is  to  write  oneself  down  a 
Philistine  in  the  approved  Anglo-Saxon  man 
ner.  Poe's  despair  is  his  message. 

58 


Wordsworth 

Turning  now  to  Wordsworth,  we  observe 
with  surprise  that  a  spiritual  vision  so  rare 
should  attend  an  artistry  so  inadequate.  Even 
in  his  rare,  most  splendid  moments,  Words 
worth  cannot  approach  Poe  as  an  artist.  But 
Wordsworth  rises  with  such  ease  to  heights 
that  Poe  cannot  attain!  The  glories  of  what 
he  sees  reflect  themselves  in  the  long  stream  of 
Wordsworth's  verse.  It  is  a  dull  stream  but 
now  and  then  it  flows  "fast  by  the  oracle  of 
God."  We  reach  a  new  realm  of  the  spirit  al 
together.  The  stream  itself  may  seem  inter 
minable,  its  waters  leaden,  but  we  have  those 
wonderful  sunrises.  The  Wordsworthian 
stream  seizes  the  fires  in  the  sky.  The  scoriae 
river  of  Poe  is  subterranean.  Wordsworth 
has  moments  of  sublimity  in  which  he  conveys 
an  effect  of  artistry.  Consider  "The  Daffo 
dils"  and  that  ode.  But  there  are  in  both  such 
lapses  from  form  that  we  feel  Wordsworth  to 
be  second  rate  as  an  artist,  although  he  is  a  poet 
of  the  highest  genius — the  genius  which  takes 
the  form  of  spiritual  insight.  This  accounts 

59 


William  Dean  Howells 

for  the  vast  bulk  of  Wordsworth's  poetry. 
He  had  to  practice,  practice  and  practice,  like 
a  little  girl  at  a  piano,  and  when  he  no  longer 
practiced,  he  ceased  to  be  a  poet. 

If  this  difference  between  the  genius  of  Poe 
and  the  genius  of  Wordsworth  be  fully  real 
ized,  it  will  be  easy  to  expose  the  fallacy  to 
which  an  occasional  woman  in  literature  has 
given  so  ready  an  ear.  Genius  in  a  woman, 
when  she  has  any,  is  the  genius  of  spiritual  in 
sight.  We  are  often  told  that  genius  is  of  no 
sex.  This  is  a  mistake,  as  Mrs.  Jameson 
pointed  out.  The  genius  of  a  woman  can  man 
ifest  itself  most  happily  through  her  spiritual 
growth.  As  a  poet,  she  can  be  great  in 
Wordsworth's  manner,  but  not  in  Poe's  man 
ner.  The  tremendous  spiritual  visions  have 
been  those  of  women  so  often.  This  spiritual 
insight  is  the  substance  of  the  genius  of  the 
Sybil,  of  Joan  of  Arc,  of  Catherine  of  Siena, 
of  Elizabeth  of  Hungary,  of  Mrs.  Mary  Baker 
Eddy,  of  ever  so  many  more  who  lived  their 
poems  instead  of  writing  them.  A  Poe  or  a 

60 


Woman 


Wilde  would  have  lived  his  poetry,  did  live  his 
poetry,  in  quite  another  way. 

A  woman  in  literature  thus  destroys  the 
foundation  of  her  career  when  she  undertakes 
to  "live  life"  in  a  man's  sense  of  the  term. 
Wordsworth  could  not  have  written  that  ode 
if  he  were  living  life  as  literary  women  are 
sometimes  told  to  live  life.  What  a  thousand 
pities  this  question  has  been  left  to  the  Phil 
istines  as  a  matter  of  morals!  Our  women  of 
genius  do  not  hear  the  subject  discussed  in 
anything  but  the  British  manner.  Those  Brit 
ish  know  nothing  of  this  subject  because  their 
women  have  no  genius.  Genius  is  found 
among  our  women  because  their  origin  is  not 
so  exclusively  Anglo-Saxon.  But  the  genius 
of  American  women  is  thwarted  by  the  defer 
ence  they  are  trained  to  pay  to  British  opinion. 
Ho  wells  shows  no  such  deference.  If  a  de 
fiance  of  the  Philistine  morality  echoes  from 
London  our  women  receive  it  with  no  suspicion 
of  British  incapacity  to  discuss  the  subject  from 
the  standpoint  of  either  woman  or  "her  sphere." 

61 


William  Dean  Howells 

No  anomaly  could  be  greater  than  that  of 
an  American  woman  of  genius  undertaking  to 
"live  life"  at  the  bidding  of  any  Briton  whose 
pieces  read  well  between  the  covers  of  a  book. 
Now,  all  that  our  "literary"  women  hear  on 
the  subject  of  living  life  for  the  sake  of  their 
careers  is,  as  far  as  they  are  concerned,  of  Brit 
ish  origin.  No  educated  American  girl  is  ever 
permitted  to  suspect  unless  she  reads  Howells 
how  amazingly  poor  the  literature  of  the  Eng 
lish  really  is.  As  a  guide  to  the  living  of  "lif  e," 
it  is  now  preposterous.  If  this  truth  be  less 
obvious  than  it  should,  the  fault  is  that  of  the 
"great"  novelists  of  the  approved  British  pat 
tern. 

One  of  the  glories  of  Howells  is  his  revela 
tion  of  what  we  may  call,  for  the  purposes  of 
this  analysis,  the  Wordsworthian  woman  as  dis 
tinguished  from  the  Byronian  woman,  from  the 
Shelley  woman.  The  American  woman  must 
be  true,  that  is,  to  the  New  England  conscience 
in  its  organic  development  upon  a  spiritual 
plane.  Unless  she  do  so,  she  can  not  be  a  lady 

62 


The  Lady 


in  any  sense  of  the  term  known  to  us.  Howells 
proves  this  up  to  the  hilt.  Of,  course,  to  tell 
us  the  tale  of  the  native  American  lady  in  the 
setting  supplied  by  the  literary  age  of  Howells 
in  fidelity  to  the  principles  of  his  art  was 
a  delicate  as  well  as  a  difficult  task.  The 
Howells  lady  has  to  be  a  virtuous  woman,  as 
the  Victorians  said,  or  she  could  not  have  ap 
peared  as  a  heroine  at  all.  She  illustrates  or, 
rather,  demonstrates  the  codes  and  etiquettes 
and  ideas  of  her  time  and  class  with  an  amaz 
ing  lifelikeness.  Instead  of  speaking  of  the 
heroine  of  a  Howells  novel,  one  ought  to  add 
the  "s"  and  speak  of  the  heroines.  A  Howells 
novel  is  full  of  them.  How  beautifully  they 
are  managed! 

The  method  of  Howells  is  not  like  that  of 
those  masters  of  line  drawing  who  convey  a 
whole  character  in  a  stroke.  It  seems  to  have 
something  of  the  touch  of  the  French  master 
who  would  not  paint  the  crucifixion,  throwing 
an  immense  shadow  of  it  into  the  foreground 
instead. 

63 


William  Dean  Howells 

The  merit  of  this  method,  the  vivid  effect  of 
it,  would  be  unattainable  to  any  but  a  literary 
artist  of  the  highest  genius.  Think  of  the  dif 
ficulties  it  involves !  I  refer,  of  course,  to  the 
difficulties  for  an  American  novelist  of  the 
period  in  which  Howells  was  doing  his  great 
creative  work.  He  found  his  feminine  char 
acters  to  be  all,  in  the  main,  native  here.  The 
age  with  him  was  that  which  followed  our  civil 
war,  again  speaking  generally  and  allowing  a 
generous  limit  to  the  period.  "A  Fearful  Re 
sponsibility"  is  an  adventure  of  some  Ameri 
cans  in  Italy  while  our  civil  war  raged.  The 
detail  to  note  is  that  the  women  of  Howells  fit 
very  snugly  into  their  setting.  They  are  all  so 
intimately  associated  with  their  environment 
that  they  make  me  think  of  the  chorus  in  a 
Greek  play  or  in  a  comic  opera  of  the  Victorian 
age. 

The  striking  thing  about  a  Howells  woman 
is  that  she  is  so  unlike  any  other  Howells 
woman.  All  those  women  are  of  one  stock,  of 
one  mind  in  essentials,  yet  each  is  in  her  in- 

64 


Passion 


dividual  capacity  so  different  from  the  rest. 
There  are  no  caricatures  in  the  offensive  im 
plications  of  the  term,  for  no  Howells  heroine 
is  anything  but  a  lady,  though  she  stepped  only 
yesterday  out  of  a  home  in  rural  Maine  to  the 
humblest  "rooming  house"  in  Boston. 

How  strongly  sexed,  none  the  less,  those 
Howells  ladies  are  created,  how  passionate! 
They  set  forth  in  a  relentless  pursuit  of  the 
right  man  with  such  intuition!  The  whole, 
passionate  soul  is  naked  before  us. 

This  intensity  of  nature  in  the  American 
woman,  her  boundless  capacity  not  only  for 
love  but  for  bringing  home  its  object  bound 
and  captive  is  not  perhaps  an  original  discov 
ery  of  Howells's  own.  He  exploits  the  dis 
covery  with  an  art  and  an  ease  that  render  it 
all  his.  The  refinement  of  his  method  is  ab 
solute.  The  beauty  of  his  manner  is  flawless. 
In  his  heroine  may  burn  the  flame  that  con 
sumed  the  most  abandoned  of  the  Byzantine 
empresses.  Her  swift  and  sidelong  glance 
may  have  the  subtle  significance  of  the  look 

65 


William  Dean  Howells 

in  Cleopatra's  eyes  when  first  she  fastened 
them  upon  Antony.  Never,  for  all  that,  does 
a  true  Howells  heroine  forget  herself.  Never 
does  she  abandon  herself.  She  is  a  Christian 
lady.  She  realizes  the  part  with  a  spirituality 
so  instinctive  that  her  boldest  gesture  cannot 
be  misunderstood  even  when  she  is  in  the  very 
act  of  revealing  the  flames  by  which  she  is  con 
sumed.  It  is  as  if  Dido  were  reincarnate  to 
our  eyes  in  the  capacity  of  Quakeress.  The 
analogy  from  Dido  is  a  little  misleading  be 
cause  ^Sneas  got  away  from  Dido  and  he 
could  not  have  escaped  a  Howells  heroine. 
Lily  Mayhew  is  a  great  exception.  Miss  Ken- 
ton  threw  one  lover  over. 

Have  I  said  already  that  an  illuminating 
treatise  on  the  mystery  of  woman  could  be  com 
piled  in  the  form  of  pertinent  extracts  from  the 
novels  of  Howells?  If  so,  let  me  repeat  my 
self,  since  Whitman  did  the  same.  What 
Howells  thinks  of  women  is  deducible  from  the 
observations  he  scatters  through  his  greatest 
tales  which  are  of  adventure  among  women. 

66 


Heroines 


Obviously,  he  admires  women  prodigiously 
and  he  respects  them  as  much  as  he  admires 
them.  The  art  with  which  he  communicates 
this  feeling  to  his  readers  is  all  his  own  and  is 
inimitable. 

The  nature  of  the  literary  gift  that  can 
achieve  such  an  effect  is  very  precious.  The 
genius  that  creates  a  Becky  Sharp  in  Thack 
eray's  fashion,  or  the  genius  that  creates  a 
Valerie  Marneffe  in  Balzac's  manner  is  less  ex 
alted,  less  subtle,  less  rare  even,  than  the  gifts 
required  for  the  adequate  treatment  of  the 
Howells  heroine.  Heine  has  tried  somewhere 
to  explain  why  it  is  so  much  easier  to  paint  a 
crowded  battle  picture  on  a  gigantic  canvas 
than  to  do  an  old  woman's  visage  in  Rem 
brandt's  manner  within  a  little  frame. 

If  this  illustration  were  not  misleading  in 
some  respects  as  well  as  very  informing  in 
others,  it  would  be  easy  to  sum  up  the  Howells 
portraits  of  women  by  saying  that  they  are 
done  in  the  Rembrandt  manner.  It  would  be 
a  misunderstanding  of  the  genius  of  Howells 

67 


William  Dean  Howells 

altogether  to  suggest  that  Howells  does  not 
allow  a  woman  to  stand  out  as  some  English 
and  French  novelists  have  their  Becky  Sharps 
and  their  Valerie  Marneffes  "stand  out." 
That  would  have  been  a  method  alien  to  the 
realism  of  the  essentially  American  novelist, 
false  to  his  conception  of  his  art. 


68 


VII 

A   GLANCE   AT   MARCIA 

THIS  is  a  point  that  may  be  brought  out  more 
clearly  by  reference  to  a  novelist  who  has  the 
luck  to  share  one  trait  with  Howells  conspicu 
ously.  Anthony  Trollope  reveals  an  amazing 
insight  into  the  love  and  the  motive  of  woman. 
In  this  detail  he  has  no  equal  in  the  whole  cat 
alogue  of  British  male  novelists  until  we  go 
as  far  back  as  Richardson.  Trollope  has  an 
amazing  comprehension  of  the  young  lady. 
Meredith  cannot  approach  the  ground  held  by 
Trollope  here.  The  marvel  is  all  the  greater 
because  Englishmen  as  a  rule  do  not  under 
stand  women  at  all,  the  limitations  of  Dickens 
in  this  respect  being  ludicrous.  Intimate, 
however,  as  is  the  acquaintance  of  Trollope 
with  the  heart  of  woman,  he  is  no  artist.  Now? 

69. 


William  Dean  Howells 

Howells  is  an  artist  to  the  finger  tips  and  a  very 
great  artist  indeed,  although  our  American 
subservience  to  the  British  literary  superstition 
will  long  cast  its  shadow  athwart  the  light  of 
this  really  obvious  truth. 

To  say  of  Howells  that  he  has  created  no 
"great"  feminine  character  is,  moreover,  to 
forget  that  the  American  lady  in  the  Howells 
setting  no  more  condescended  to  be  a  "great" 
character  than  a  member  of  the  British  House 
of  Commons  in  our  twentieth  century  would 
condescend  to  be  a  "great"  orator.  It  is  the 
business  in  life  of  a  Howells  woman  to  fit  as 
perfectly  into  her  social  environment  as  if  she 
were  a  gem  in  a  setting.  It  is  her  business  in 
life  to  be  buffeted  by  fate,  to  have  self-efface 
ment,  to  be  very,  very  feminine,  to  be  revered. 
The  women  of  Howells  are  all  of  these,  but  the 
miracle  of  their  creator's  art  is  in  the  circum 
stance  that  they  are  so  vivid,  so  real,  so  desti 
tute  of  the  insipidity  one  looks  for. 

The  paradox  of  woman,  as  we  encounter  her 
in  that  native  American,  Anglo-Saxon  atmos- 

70 


Woman's  Humor 

phere,  is  her  "reality,"  in  the  metaphysical 
sense.  The  women  of  Howells,  in  all  his 
novels,  either  make  the  great  decisions,  or  see  t 
that  they  are  made.  Woman  has  no  master 
but  she  appears,  for  all  that,  in  a  condition  of 
subservience.  The  subservience  is  ever  to  a 
thing  mysterious,  indefinable.  It  may  be  con 
vention.  Perhaps  it  is  that  New  England  con 
science.  Or  is  it  a  survival  of  the  Nemesis  of 
the  ancient  Greeks?  It  broods  over  the 
women  of  the  Howells  world. 

Howells  has  decided  finally  the  controversy 
as  to  whether  or  not  women  have  a  sense  of 
humor.  His  management  of  their  dialogue  is 
infinitely  finer  than  the  finest  thing  of  the  kind 
in  Meredith.  Howells  has  exploited  the  sense 
of  humor  in  women  with  a  subtlety  suggesting 
it  as  too  feminine  a  thing  in  its  spirit  or  essence 
to  yield  itself  and  its  possibilities  entirely  to 
the  heavy  touch  of  coarse  man. 

The  heroines  of  Howells  have  moments,  in 
spired  and  perfect  moments,  when  they  might 
sustain  without  shrinking  a  comparison  with 

71 


William  Dean  Howells 

the  heroines  of  Shakespeare  himself!  The  dia 
logue  is  a  sufficient  proof  of  it. 

My  own  favorite  among  the  heroines  of 
Howells  charms  me  for  another  reason  alto 
gether.  She  does,  indeed,  take  the  initiative 
in  her  love  affair  with  a  passionate  boldness  un- 
paralled  since  Juliet  had  that  unfortunate  af 
fair  with  Romeo,  but  Marcia — for  I  am  think 
ing  of  the  heroine  of  "A  Modern  Instance" — 
is  New  England  in  every  fiber.  She  is  fitted 
into  her  setting  with  the  cunning  a  Florentine 
goldsmith  of  old  might  have  shown  in  working 
a  gem  into  a  ring.  She  makes  a  fool  of  herself 
over  the  man  she  loves  and  she  does  it  divinely. 
With  what  infatuation,  and  at  the  same  time 
with  what  good  taste,  what  chastity  of  attitude 
Howells  permits  himself  to  gloat  over  the  phys 
ical  aspect  of  his  Marcia ! 

Never  shall  I  forget  the  thrill  with  which  I 
stumbled  upon  Marcia  in  that  inspired  first 
chapter  of  "A  Modern  Instance."  And  I 
have  a  seraglio  that  includes  such  captives  as 
Clarissa  Harlowe,  too!  I  have  intruded  with 

72 


Marcia 


Rastignac  upon  the  privacy  of  Madame  de 
Nucingen.  I  have  gone  stealthily  with  Mon- 
toni  along  the  fatal  corridor  of  the  castle  of 
Udolpho,  halting  with  all  his  guilt  upon  my 
soul  outside  the  door  between  the  slumbering 
Emily  and  me.  I  have  fallen  with  d'Artagnan 
upon  the  bosom  of  Milady.  When  I  met  Mar 
cia  I  forgot  the  sirens  and  the  serpents  of  old 
Nile  to  linger  in  the  glow  of  that  lamp  she 
carried  to  the  front  door  to  let  Bart  ley  Hub- 
bard  in.  She  lifted  it  high,  that  lamp.  "The 
action  brought  her  figure  in  relief,"  explains 
her  creator.  He  dwells  upon  her  form  and 
figure  lovingly,  but  he  reveals  the  woman  be 
yond  and  within  the  temple  of  her  spirit,  a 
Wordsworthian  woman.  The  splendor  of  the 
genius  of  our  Howells  resides  in  that  capacity 
of  his  to  reveal  what  a  truly  extraordinary 
thing  is  an  ordinary  woman. 

The  great  novelists  have  for  the  most  part 
been  well  content  to  delineate  the  extraordin 
ary  woman,  the  paragon  of  virtue,  the  fiend 
from  below,  the  woman  who  is  fallen,  the  ec- 

73 


William  Dean  Howells 

centric.  That  is  relatively  easy.  To  find  in 
the  every  day  woman  the  attributes  of  a  Mar- 
cia  is  possible  to  that  writer  only  who  has  looked 
into  her  heart  with  something  of  Shakespeare's 
vision.  This  Howells  can  do  because  his  sym 
pathy  with  the  woman  in  love  is  as  subtle  as  his 
comprehension  of  her.  The  madness  of  Mar- 
cia's  pursuit  of  Bartley  Hubbard  is  so  very 
natural!  Her  jealousy  is  as  insane  as  it  is 
charming.  The  most  wonderful  thing  about 
Marcia  is  the  fact  that  there  is  nothing  at  all 
remarkable  about  her.  She  is  glorious  because 
love  has  made  her  so,  and  not  because  of  any 
qualities  of  her  own.  When  it  is  said  of 
Howells  that  he  understands  women  the  truth 
conveyed  is  that  he  appreciates  the  intensity, 
the  power,  the  daring  of  her  heart.  He  is  one 
novelist  out  of  ten  thousand  of  his  sex,  for  rare 
is  he  who  has  been  afforded  a  glimpse  into  the 
mysteries  unveiled  by  Howells.  Not  that  the 
glimpse  would  do  the  average  novelist  any 
good,  seeing  that  the  average  novelist  is  with 
out  the  touch  of  Howells  and  would  not  know 

74 


Madly  in  Love 

a  Marcia  if  he  saw  one.     A  great  woman  is 
seldom  recognized  except  by  the  few. 

Marcia  affords  the  spectacle  of  a  woman  in 
love  with  a  man  but  half  in  love.  Her  rush  to 
the  railway  station,  where  she  overtakes  him 
and  marries  him  before  he  can  recover  from  his 
surprise,  could  have  been  contrived  with  del 
icacy  only  by  a  consummate  artist.  True, 
Bartley  was  in  a  way  kidnapped — but  he 
was  kidnapped  not  by  any  Becky  Sharp, 
nor  by  a  Valerie  Marneffe,  but  by  Marcia— 
beautiful,  jealous,  good  Marcia,  the  perfect 
lady,  the  sweet,  dark,  lady,  with  red,  very  red 
lips ! 

Throughout  the  agonizing  disillusion  that 
comes  to  Marcia  in  her  wedded  years,  the  art  of 
Howells  is  tested  most  severely,  and  it  does  not 
fail  him  once.  I  revel  in  this  exquisite  heroine's 
hot  bickering  with  her  husband.  Howells 
brings  him  home  drunk  once  in  a  mariner  be 
yond  all  the  praise  bestowed  upon  the  British 
novelist  who  makes  a  specialty  of  this  sort  of 
scene, 

Zfi 


William  Dean  Howells 

That  poor  Bartley  Hubbard  taunts  Marcia 
at  last  with  the  fact  that  she  kidnapped  him. 
She  had  thrown  him  away  in  one  of  her  fits  of 
mad  jealousy  and  then,  finding  that  she  could 
not  live  without  him,  she  ran  after  him.  The 
whole  story  of  Marcia  is  in  that  bitter  charge, 
flung  in  her  face  by  her  husband  in  the  course 
of  that  last  scene.  Her  passion  is  realized  for 
us  divinely  here  and  still  she  retains  that  very 
womanly  charm  which  makes  a  Howells 
heroine  irresistible. 

Of  all  the  women  of  Howells  I  love  Marcia 
best.  I  must  commit  myself  still  further  by 
confessing  that  her  image  will  haunt  me  as  I 
sit  with  Mr.  Slope  on  a  sofa  beside  that  shame 
less  yet  beautiful  woman  in  Trollope's  best 
novel.  Nor  can  I  sink  into  the  arms  of  the 
most  tempting  Marquise  in  all  Balzac  without 
a  consciousness  of  sullying  the  soul  I  had  held 
in  consecration  to  Marcia. 

My  attitude  to  Marcia,  the  irresistible  Mar 
cia,  thus,  is  precisely  that  of  Ernest  Dowson  to 
Cynara  in  the  great  lines: 

76 


A  Tribute 

I  have  forgot  much,  Cynara,  gone  with  the  wind, 

Flung  roses,  roses  riotously  with  the  throng, 
Dancing  to  put  thy  pale  lost  lilies  out  of  mind, 

but  I  can't  do  it.     I  think  of  Marcia  while 
reading  of  Madame  Bovary: 

But  when  the  feast  is  finished  and  the  lamps  expire, 
Then  falls  thy  shadow,  Cynara !  the  night  is  thine ; 

And  I  am  desolate  and  sick  of  an  old  passion, 
Yea,  hungry  for  the  lips  of  my  desire: 

I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara,  in  my  fashion ! 


77 


VIII 

THE   HUB   OF   THE   UNIVERSE   OF   HOWELLS 

TAKEN  as  a  whole,  the  fiction  of  William  Dean 
Howells  comprises  the  most  effective  indict 
ment  of  the  native  world,  of  the  native  Ameri 
can  society,  that  has  ever  been  framed.  It  is  a 
world  of  the  trivial  and  of  the  inconseqential, 
a  society  of  men  and  women  without  ideas  ex 
cept  those  caught  on  the  rebound  or  at  second 
hand  from  the  Europeans,  a  world  of  infinite 
physical  comfort,  a  world  that  is  childish  and 
feminized. 

At  no  time  in  his  life,  I  am  certain,  did  it 
enter  the  head  of  Howells  to  indict  that  Anglo- 
Saxon  element  in  American  life  to  which  he 
owes  his  being  and  upon  which  he  has  drawn 
for  his  material.  Indeed,  the  native  American, 
in  the  pages  of  Howells,  is  a  likable  character, 
freed  in  some  fashion  or  other  from  the  dis- 

78 


His  Man 


agreeable  characteristics  of  the  English.  The 
American  in  Howells  belongs  to  the  breed  of 
the  Englishman  in  Trollope,  but  we  are  con 
scious  of  a  difference.  The  Englishman  in 
Trollope  is  thoroughly  masculine.  The  Amer 
ican  in  Howells  is  feminized.  No  careful 
student  of  Howells  can  miss  the  fact  that  a 
native  American  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin  gains 
no  footing  as  a  gentleman  in  the  society  of  his 
own  country  if  he  be  not  womanish,  lacking  in 
virility,  the  type  of  man  who  seems  born  for  a 
woman  to  play  with.  This  accounts  to  me  for 
the  significant  fact  that  whenever  in  the  How 
ells  gallery  of  male  portraits  we  encounter  one 
upon  whose  features  is  the  stamp  of  genius  or 
virility,  he  is  not  introduced  to  us  as  a  gentle 
man  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word.  The 
typical  gentleman  of  Howells  wears  male 
attire,  of  course,  but  he  would  be  more  com 
fortable,  I  think,  in  skirts.  This  suggests  no 
flaw  in  the  art  of  our  great  novelist.  It  vindi 
cates  his  realism.  George  Eliot  is  untrue  to 
life  when  her  heroes  turn  out  to  be  women  but 

79 


William  Dean  Howells 

Howells  is  faithful  to  reality  when  his  hero 
does  the  same.  No  doubt,  there  was  some 
feminizing  principle  at  work  in  the  men  who 
came  over  in  the  Mayflower,  and  we  see  its  out 
come  in  the  Howells  gentleman. 

The  temptation  to  illustrate  this  point  by  a 
study  of  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,"  is  very 
great.  I  prefer  to  go  to  a  novel  that  is  less 
known.  "Doctor  Breen's  Practice"  remains, 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  critic,  the  most  sig 
nificant  of  all  the  works  of  its  author.  In  that 
study  of  native  American  life  in  New  England, 
Howells  exposes  his  method  most  nakedly,  lets 
us  into  the  secrets  of  his  formula.  The  tale  is 
shaken  out  of  his  sleeve  as  if  it  were  a  trick.  It 
is.  We  have  in  this  thing  the  very  best  pot 
boiler  in  the  English  language.  There  is  no 
decline  in  that  wonderful  technique,  no  sign  of 
weariness.  It  is  a  pot  boiler  because  it  is  a 
repetition.  We  have  met  that  nice  young  hero 
before.  He  gives  himself  away  with  his  rever 
ence  for  Woman.  That  philosophy  of  Woman, 
too,  so  wonderful,  so  convincing,  so  free  from 

80 


Doctor  Breen 

anything  like  facetious  disillusion  and  so  quot 
able — we  expect  and  would  not  dispense  with 
it.  This  is  not  the  tale,  however,  through 
which  one's  introduction  to  Howells  should  be 
made.  There  is  too  much  artistry  in  it,  too 
beautiful  a  manner.  It  is  as  light  as  foam,  and 
still  it  has  substance,  for  it  brings  home  to  us 
the  truth  that  in  the  native  American  world  the 
Anglo-Saxon  of  force  and  genius  and  virility 
does  not  "belong,"  is  "impossible."  The  de 
finition  of  efficiency  in  the  biological  sense  as 
distinguished  from  the  commercial  sense  is 
made  by  Woman.  She  has  an  ideal  that  works 
out  in  a  feminized  man.  I  suspect  this  to  be 
due  to  an  instinct  for  domination  in  herself. 
Woman  in  all  the  world  of  Howells  is  supreme. 
She  may  be  the  incarnation  of  whatever  is 
trivial,  like  Mrs.  Maynard,  the  patient  of 
Doctor  Breen,  or  she  may  be  a  wonderful 
young  woman,  like  Doctor  Breen  herself. 
This  beautiful  homoeopathic  physician  stands 
balanced  before  us  a  long  time  between  her  two 
lovers.  Mr.  Libby  is  the  Howells  young  man, 

81 


William  Dean  Howells 

that  native  American  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin 
and  New  England  antecedents  who  springs 
from  the  aristocracy  of  manufacture  and  is  so 
often  on  his  way  to  Europe  or  returning  thence. 
Nothing  could  be  emptier  than  his  head  or  more 
charming  than  his  imbecility.  Why  he  was 
going  about  so  much  with  that  married  woman 
I  cannot  imagine,  although  it  is  true  that  she 
had  left  her  husband.1  An  eager  boyishness  of 
manner  is  his,  too,  and  he  has  his  full  share  of 
reverence  for  Woman  as  disclosed  by  Howells, 
in  which  one  respect  he  is  like  me.  I  am  quite 
sure  I  am  not  so  imbecile  as  Libby  if  only  for 
the  reason  that  I  am  no  Howells  young  man. 
I  wish  I  were.  I  would  be  charming  then. 

So  Doctor  Breen  marries  Libby.  She  re 
fused  to  do  that  very  thing,  I  know,  and  I  felt 
certain  she  was  going  to  marry  Doctor  Mul- 
bridge.  For  once,  I  didn't  know  my  Howells. 

iLet  me  warn  the  reader  against  rushing  to  the  library  in 
hot  haste  for  this  novel  in  the  expectation  of  coming  across 
anything  wicked.  Not  a  wickedness  in  it  from  beginning  to 
end!  Howells  would  never  deal  in  that  sort  of  thing.  The 
young  man  simply  tags  after  the  lady. 

82 


Gentlemen 


In  his  pages  the  man  of  virile  strength,  the  real 
man,  I  had  nearly  said,  is  socially  out  of  the 
question.  Usually  an  eccentric,  he  may  be  a 
foreman  in  the  mill,  or  a  journalist  whose 
people  are  from  the  backwoods,  or  a  man  who 
made  a  fortune  out  of  his  meritorious  paint  or 
even  a  physician  practicing  in  a  lost  corner  of 
New  England.  In  any  event,  the  touch  of 
genius  damns  him.  I  ought  to  have  seen  from 
the  beginning  that  Doctor  Breen  never  would 
marry  Doctor  Mulbridge.  The  mother  of 
Doctor  Mulbridge  saw  why.  "I  don't  know," 
she  told  her  son,  "as  she'd  call  you  what  they 
call  a  gentleman."  And  why  was  Doctor 
Mulbridge  no  gentleman  in  that  world?  Be 
cause  he  was  a  strong  man.  This  is  a  funda 
mental  fact  in  the  world  of  Howells,  a  circum 
stance  brought  out  not  of  set  purpose  but  as 
an  incident  of  his  realism.  What  a  collection 
of  mediocrities  the  husbands  of  those  women 
are!  Man  in  that  world  exists  as  the  hus 
band  of  a  woman  he  adores,  or  he  is  an  absurd 
ity. 

83 


William  Dean  Howells 

I  think  this  accounts  for  another  remarkable 
characteristic  of  the  world  of  Howells.  I  refer 
to  its  disability  regarding  ideas.  This  ginger 
bread  world,  with  its  young  ladies  of  virtuous 
severity  like  Miss  Blood  and  its  conscientious 
spinsters  like  Annie  Kilburn,  is  remarkably 
accessible  to  ideas.  But  the  ideas  must  be 
emasculated,  like  the  men  the  heroines  marry. 
An  idea  in  any  other  aspect  has  something 
about  it  that  is  either  indelicate  or  dangerous. 
It  is  not  adapted  to  the  feminine  mind.  In 
the  wonderful  world  into  which  we  are  peeping, 
everything  must  be  adapted  to  that  feminine 
mind  because  it  is  the  only  mind  that  arrives  at 
the  great  decisions.  What  agonies  of  suspense 
attend  the  period  of  waiting  for  a  young  girl  to 
do  something,  even  in  tales  so  unlike  as  "Indian 
Slimmer"  and  "The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook." 
The  idea  in  those  situations  is  intimate  and  per 
sonal,  having  particular  reference  to  the  vir 
ginities  and  the  chastities,  but  it  is  an  idea  and 
therefore  difficult,  very  difficult.  Even  when 
the  idea  is  not  intimate  and  personal  but  ab- 

84 


Fear  of  Ideas 

stract  and  ethical  or  sociological,  as  in  "A 
Hazard  of  New  Fortunes,"  or  in  "Annie 
Kilburn,"  it  is  a  source  of  peril.  It  may  get 
into  a  woman's  head.  A  hero  spends  an 
incredible  amount  of  time  in  the  task  of  keep 
ing  an  idea  out  of  a  woman's  head.  The 
heroine  of  "A  Modern  Instance"  is  the  cause  of 
much  trouble  on  this  account  and  in  the  end  it 
is  not  certain  that  the  idea  actually  gained 
access.  It  would  have  been  an  extraordinary 
thing.  Lydia  Blood  is  the  only  one  of  all  the 
heroines  who  "gets"  ideas,  that  is  to  say,  more 
than  one,  but  she  is  suspected  of  something  that 
looks  more  or  less  like  indelicacy.  The  inter 
minable  agony  of  "April  Hopes"  is  due  to  the 
catastrophe  that  the  heroine  has  an  idea — not 
much  of  an  idea  outside  the  world  we  are  con 
sidering,  hardly  recognizable  as  an  idea  so  much 
as  the  suggestion  of  one. 

Only  less  remarkable  than  the  poverty  of  all 
these  charming  people  intellectually,  is  their 
caste.  Even  when  they  emerge  from  the 
humblest  of  rural  homes,  they  manifest  all  that 

85 


William  Dean  Howells 

instinct  for  caste  and  that  dread  of  equality 
which  are  the  Anglo-Saxon's  birthright.  Such 
characteristics  give  him  the  stability  of  the  Bos 
ton  families  that  Howells  loves.  It  is  an  atti 
tude  to  life  and  even  Silas  Lapham  takes  it  for 
granted.  I  suppose  his  daughters  are  not  in 
tended  to  be  perfect  ladies.  At  any  rate  they 
are  not  high  caste,  and  the  fact  is  brought  home 
to  us  so  delicately.  The  same  point  is  made 
much  of  in  Annie  Kilburn's  relations  with  that 
clergyman.  There  is  a  young  man  knocking 
about  the  world  of  Howells  who  once  worked 
in  overalls.  The  heroine  allotted  to  him  shud 
dered  a  great  deal  over  that.  The  young 
women  who  work  in  a  "store"  are  kept  in  their 
places.  It  is  a  native  American  world  in  which 
the  "best  people"  patronize  the  efficient  and  in 
which  ignorance  of  Europe  is  for  the  very 
vulgar  only.  A  kind  of  pedantic  exactness  in 
the  use  of  a  European  vocabulary  makes  one 
the  heir  of  the  ages  indeed,  and  there  is  a  par 
alyzing  effect  in  one  of  the  novels  of  a  member 
of  a  high  caste  family  addressing  a  fruit 


Boston 


peddler  in  the  Italian  language  on  the  streets 
of  Boston. 

Ah,  that  Boston  of  Howells's !  I  am  not  at 
all  interested  in  the  Boston  of  those  Adamses. 
I  never  saw  the  horrors  of  native  Americanism 
in  their  Anglo-Saxon  form  set  down  unspar 
ingly  until  I  read  the  autobiography  of  the 
Charles  Francis  Adams  who  died  in  1915. 
The  agony  he  experienced  in  his  efforts  to  ad 
just  himself  to  the  native  American  environ 
ment  proves  how  great  a  man  he  was.  His  fa 
ther,  his  grandfather,  his  great-grandfather, 
had  been  illustrious  before  him  in  the  largest 
native  American  manner — presidents,  secre 
taries  of  this,  that  and  the  other,  ministers 
abroad  and  all  that.1 

i  Evidently  one  of  those  cousinships  and  clanships  to  which 
Howells  refers  in  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  (page  243  of 
the  edition  published  by  Houghton  Mifflin  Company)  as  form 
ing  the  admiration  and  terror  of  the  adventurer  in  Boston 
society:  "He  finds  himself  hemmed  in  and  left  out  at  every 
turn  by  ramifications  that  forbid  him  all  hope  of  safe  person 
ality  in  his  comments  on  people;  he  is  never  less  secure  than 
when  he  hears  some  given  Bostonian  denouncing  or  ridiculing 
another.  If  he  will  be  advised,  he  will  guard  himself  from 
concurring  in  these  criticisms,  however  just  they  appear,  for 

87 


William  Dean  Howells 

The  record  is  not  so  tremendous  to  those  of 
us  who,  being  imperfectly  Americanized,  are 
a  menace  to  the  dear  republic,  and  to  those 
precious  institutions.  I  would  not,  for  my 
single  self,  surrender  the  lines  of  Poe  to  Helen 
for  the  whole  administration  of  the  elder 
Adams.  No  Adams  ever  made  an  epigram,  I 
believe,  or  uttered  a  witticism,  or  took  a  poetical 
view  of  the  republic,  or  saw  a  truth  in  a  flash 
of  insight.  The  Charles  Francis  Adams  of 
this  autobiography  was  imperfectly  Ameri 
canized.  His  tragedy  was  just  that.  When 
Americans  disparage  Boston,  they  disparage 
themselves.  I  consider  Boston  the  greatest 
thing  in  the  United  States.  It  is  true  that 
Boston  has  petrified  American  thought  in  the 

the  probability  is  that  their  object  is  a  cousin  of  not  more  than 
one  remove  from  the  censor.  When  the  alien  hears  a  group  of 
Boston  ladies  calling  one  another,  and  speaking  of  all  their 
gentlemen  friends,  by  the  familiar  abbreviations  of  their 
Christian  names,  he  must  feel  keenly  the  exile  to  which  he  was 
born;  but  he  is  then,  at  least,  in  comparatively  little  danger; 
while  these  latent  and  tacit  cousinships  open  pitfalls  at  every 
step  around  him,  in  a  society  where  Middlesexes  have  married 
Essexes  and  produced  Suffolks  for  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years." 

88 


The  Adamses 

forms  and  formulas  of  British  thought.  We 
have  been  made  by  Boston  an  England  on  a 
larger  scale.  We  have  no  national  life  of  our 
own.  There  is  no  career  here  for  the  youth 
who  is  not  in  temperament  a  middle-class  Eng 
lishman. 

Poor  Charles  Francis  Adams  tried  desper 
ately  to  be  a  middle-class  Englishman.  That 
is  what  America  stands  for.  She  proclaims 
proudly  to  the  world  that  the  son,  the  friend 
less  son,  of  the  European  peasant,  may  come 
here  and  by  his  own  industry  and  thrift,  raise 
himself  to  equality  with  the  middle-class  Eng 
lishman.  I  think  the  boast  is  justified  by 
results,  although  a  Socialist  candidate  for  the 
Presidency  does  not.  Boston,  at  any  rate,  has 
made  this  the  national  idea.  Boston  has  made 
our  country,  on  the  whole,  difficult  for  the 
minority  of  us  who  are  not  middle-class  Eng 
lish.  But  think  of  the  grand  times  the  major 
ity  have !  The  republic  was  established  for  the 
majority,  to  whom  it  means  hope.  I  consider 
it  a  genuine  hope  and  no  illusion.  Jones  may 

89 


William  Dean  Howells 

be  down,  financially,  to-day.  Next  week  he 
will  be  selling  for  eighteen  cents  a  ribbon  that 
cost  him  two  cents.  He  may  invent  a  fox  trot. 
He  may  hit  upon  a  new  blend  in  cigarettes,  or 
write  another  "Three  Weeks." 

If  it  be  objected  that  I  point  only  to  the  more 
glittering  rewards,  let  me  note  the  plenitude 
of  minor  prizes  in  American  life.  Consider 
the  vast  treasure  in  the  saving  banks!  What 
multitudes  own  their  homes !  Ah !  America,  as 
the  colleges  say,  has  "made  good."  Poor 
Charles  Francis  Adams!  So  modest  he  was, 
so  simple,  so  unassuming!  America  could  no 
more  "assimilate"  him  than  she  could  "assimi 
late"  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Here  we  have  the 
real  peril  of  the  republic.  It  cannot  assimilate 
whatever  is  most  highminded,  most  generous, 
most  gifted,  in  its  own  youth.  The  republic 
can  assimilate  the  European  immigrant  who 
arrives  with  nothing  and  who  leaves  a  vast 
brewery  as  his  monument.  The  republic  is 
incapable  of  assimilating  its  native  son  who, 
inheriting  a  fortune,  lets  it  fritter  away  in  his 

90 


Our  Athens 

eagerness  to  paint  a  picture  or  make  a  great 
sonnet. 

It  is  customary  to  say  that  all  this  is  Bos 
ton's  fault.  As  they  read  the  Adams  autobiog 
raphy,  the  critics  scold  Boston.  But  Boston 
is  America.  Take  Boston  out  of  our  history 
and  there  would  be  no  United  States  as  we 
understand  the  term.  Boston  has  created  the 
only  intellectual  life  we  have.  The  spiritual 
forces  which  have  asserted  any  vitality  with  us 
were  released  first  of  all  in  Boston.  The  stamp 
of  Boston  was  on  the  character  of  every  Ameri 
can  whose  life  is  a  record  of  true  achievement. 
To  condemn  Boston  is  to  indict  the  whole 
American  people.  Nevertheless,  there  is  an 
outbreak  from  time  to  time,  against  Boston. 
Protests  are  heard  on  such  subjects  as  high 
caste  Brahmans,  Calvinist  theology,  culture. 
I  think  these  protests  arise  from  a  perception 
in  the  mind  of  Americans  that  the  gesthetic  and 
intellectual  life  of  their  country  is  inadequate. 
A  scapegoat  must  be  found.  Boston  is  highly 
available. 

91 


William  Dean  Howells 

Charles  Francis  Adams,  being  imperfectly 
Americanized,  could  never  act  or  think  like  a 
middle-class  Englishman.  He  was  never  as 
similated.  He  must  have  been  assimilated  had 
he  reached  our  shores  as  an  infant  in  the  arms 
of  a  Balkan  mother.  America  shows  more  and 
more  how  difficult  it  has  become  for  her  to 
assimilate  the  native  American,  to  make  him 
more  English  than  the  English.  This,  I  think, 
explains  the  eagerness  of  the  middle  aged  and 
the  elderly  in  our  land  to  censor,  to  control  the 
young.  Sociology,  in  our  country,  signifies 
the  regulation  of  all  who  are  young  by  those 
who  are  not  young. 

If  the  young  are  discovered  in  the  act  of 
doing  anything,  a  sort  of  pandemonium  ensues 
among  those  who  are  not  young.  Some  fresh 
form  of  censorship  is  invented  at  once,  some 
additional  authority  is  given  to  men  with  gray 
hair.  It  grows  increasingly  difficult  for  the 
young  to  escape  arrest,  to  hold  meetings  with 
out  an  invasion  by  the  police,  to  proclaim  an 
idea  without  being  hauled  up  before  a  magis- 

92 


Poor  Youth! 

trate  for  the  offense  of  thinking  aloud.  Ameri 
can  hostility  to  beauty  and  democracy  asserts 
itself  just  now  through  the  medium  of  a  war  on 
all  youth.  In  their  bewilderment  at  the  ruth- 
lessness  with  which  they  are  hounded  by  the 
middle  aged  and  the  elderly  in  our  republic, 
the  young  rush  to  certain  conclusions.  Many 
of  them  think  it  is  all  the  fault  of  John  D. 
Rockefeller.  Others  will  tell  you  that  our 
competitive  individualism  is  to  blame.  The 
best  dressed  element  among  the  young  incline 
to  a  suspicion  that  things  would  be  better  for 
them  if  all  women  voted.  On  one  point  I  do 
find  myself  able  to  agree.  This  is  the  most 
terrible  of  all  republics  to  be  young  in  unless 
one  be  a  Howells  heroine. 

The  scapegoat  to  me  is  Boston.  I  felt  sure 
of  that  long  before  this  wonderful  autobio 
graphy  of  the  second  Charles  Francis  Adams 
came  my  way.  Think  of  it!  His  father  a 
minister  to  England,  his  grandfather  our 
President,  to  say  nothing  of  his  never-to-be- 
forgotten  great-grandfather.  Yet  he  did  not 

93 


William  Dean  Howells 

become  a  middle-class  Englishman.     Boston 
had  failed  in  his  case — or  was  it  Harvard? 

Ah,  that  Boston  of  Howells's !  I  do  not  care 
a  snap  of  my  finger  for  a  view  of  the  harbor  into 
which  all  that  tea  was  so  gloriously  thrown. 
My  delight  is  all  with  the  Boston  to  which 
Bartley  brought  his  bride,  the  Boston  of  which 
grim  old  Lapham  was  the  solid  man,  the  Bos 
ton  of  that  delicious  family  of  Coreys — if  that 
be  the  way  to  spell  the  great  name.  They  tell 
me  the  town  has  greatly  changed  since  the 
Boston  of  Howells  took  its  place  in  literature 
beside  the  Paris  of  Balzac  and  the  London  of 
Thackeray.  Never  mind!  I  have  never  been 
to  Boston,  but  when  I  pay  my  first  visit  I  shall 
seek  the  decayed  gentility  of  the  street  in  which 
the  Pythoness  resided.  If  the  changes  of 
which  they  tell  me  have,  indeed,  taken  place,  I 
shall  not  feel  consoled  by  Faneuil  Hall.  The 
glory  of  Boston  is  its  position  in  the  world  of 
Howells.  I  know  that  Florence  is  a  great 
background  of  his,  that  he  has  had  his  native 
Americans  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin  on  the 

94 


New  England 

Grand  Canal  itself,  that  he  has  invaded  New 
York  and  the  middle  west.  To  me  the  great 
ness  of  Howells  associates  itself  with  that  Bos 
ton  period  that  has  all  New  England  for  its 
province.  The  rightful  ruler  in  the  world  of 
Howells  comes  from  a  line  of  New  England 
ancestors.  In  his  men  I  love  the  lovers  who 
have  neither  psychological  insight  nor  imagina 
tion  nor  fancy,  and  who,  nevertheless,  write 
book  reviews  and  embark  upon  literary  careers. 
I  love  the  mothers  whose  daughters  have  that 
stern  morality  and  those  nonentities  of  brothers. 
I  sit  amazed  as  the  wooden  sticks  of  the  How 
ells  world  go  through  the  motions  of  humanity, 
for  they  are  a  race  without  vision,  without  the 
eye  that  flames  from  a  fire  within.  How  coldly 
intellectualized  is  the  goodness  of  that  Boston 
clergyman,  DavidJSewell !  Until  I  had  read 
"The  Minister's  Charge,"  there  always  seemed 
to  me  a  mystery  in  the  native  American  of 
Anglo-Saxon  origin,  in  his  hostility  to  democ 
racy,  his  concealment  of  his  opposition  to  free 
dom  of  speech,  freedom  of  the  press,  freedom 

95 


William  Dean  Howells 

of  any  kind,  behind  a  highly  respectable 
Fourth-of-Julyism.  Careful  consideration  of 
the  sufferings  of  Lemuel  Barker  has  given  me 
the  key  to  his  mystery.  There  is  something  in 
describable  in  the  fact  that  the  decision  of  the 
question  respecting  Lemuel  Barker — rested 
with  that  perfect  gentleman,  the  Reverend  Da 
vid  Sewell.  Was  Lemuel  Barker  a  poet? 
No!  The  negative  of  the  Reverend  David  is 
emphatic.  It  makes  me  think  of  Emerson's 
dismissal  of  Poe  as  a  jingle  man. 

What  particularly  strikes  me  in  following 
the  tale  of  Lemuel  Barker's  apprenticeship  is 
that  Howells  himself  fails  to  see  precisely  what 
the  Reverend  David  Sewell  fails  to  see.  Lem 
uel  Barker  is  a  poet  to  the  marrow  of  his  bones. 
I  suspect  he  was  a  very  great  poet,  although 
Howells  cherishes  no  suspicion  of  that  kind. 
A  similarity  in  the  early  circumstances  of  the 
poet  George  Crabbe  in  London  and  those  of 
Lemuel  Barker  in  Boston  arrests  my  attention. 
There  are  differences  between  the  two  cases,  of 
course,  the  significant  one  being  that  in  London 

96 


Lemuel  Barker 

there  was  an  Edmund  Burke  for  George 
Crabbe  to  go  to,  while  in  Boston  there  lurked 
that  Reverend  What's-his-name  to  do  for 
Lemuel  Barker.  The  magnificent  thing  in 
the  tale  of  the  boy  in  Boston  is  his  in 
stinctive  realization  that  the  minister  is  no 
poet.  That  is  the  charm  of  this  tale,  although 
Howells  could  not  admit  that,  Lemuel  Barker 
is  not  sophisticated  enough  to  see  the  point  and 
it  never  really  occurs  to  the  nice  and  kind  and 
good  Reverend  Gentleman,  despite  his  offer  to 
conduct  Lemuel  into  the  presence  of  a  pub 
lisher.  The  notion  that  anybody  connected 
with  the  office  of  a  publisher  in  the  Boston  of 
Howells  could  decide  whether  Lemuel  Barker 
was  or  was  not  a  poet  is  a  sample  of  the  intel 
lectual  goods  of  that  greatest  of  all  unconscious 
humorists  since  Bottom  the  Weaver — the  Rev 
erend  David  Sewell. 

But  how  are  we  to  explain  the  attitude  of 
Howells  to  his  hero  ?  Lemuel  Barker,  we  must 
remember,  is  one  of  the  impressive  male  char 
acters  in  the  world  of  Howells,  as  natural  to 

97 


William  Dean  Howells 

the  environment  as  if  he  were  Silas  Lapham  in 
all  that  merchant's  glory,  or  a  member  of  the 
Corey  family  in  all  their  mediocrity.  Lemuel, 
however,  is  a  poet  of  genius  even  if  Howells 
never  discovers  it,  and  the  tragedy  of  Lemuel's 
apprenticeship  is  wholly  in  the  fact  that  Boston 
extinguishes  his  genius.  The  day  arrives  when 
Lemuel,  too,  brays  like  Bottom  the  Weaver, 
when  he  can  say  that  the  poem  he  brought 
to  Boston  did  not  amount  to  much.  I  know 
better.  Boston  had  put  out  the  divine  fire 
within  him.  Lemuel  Barker,  wandering  about 
Tremont  Street  or  through  the  Common,  was 
a  man  who  stood  at  the  parting  of  the  ways 
between  realism  and  romanticism.  That  is 
what  Howells,  in  his  revelation  of  his  own 
literary  passions,  has  to  say  of  a  certain  genius 
whose  tales  he  once  devoured,  a  genius,  he  com 
plains,  who  "remained  content  to  use  the  mate 
rials  of  realism  and  produce  the  effect  of 
romanticism."  We  are  getting  here  a  Howells 
verdict  upon  Charles  Reade.  "He  had  not  the 
clear  ethical  conscience  which  forced  George 

98 


Romanticism 

Eliot  to  be  realistic  when  probably  her  artistic 
prepossessions  were  romantic."  At  last  I 
know  why  George  Eliot  went  to  live  with  a 
George  Henry  Lewes.  The  artistic  prepos 
sessions  triumphed  over  that  clear  ethical  con 
science,  unless  we  are  to  follow  the  example  of 
her  transcendental  friends  by  refusing  to  con 
done  her  actual  marriage  with  another  man. 
She  stood  at  the  parting  of  the  ways  between 
realism  and  romanticism,  too,  for  we  must  all 
do  it  at  some  time  or  other. 

It  is  not  a  matter  of  choice  but  of  tempera 
ment,  destiny,  genius,  character,  and  Howells 
is  a  realist  because,  whatever  the  accident  of  his 
birth,  Boston  is  his  spiritual  home.  In  that 
detail  is  the  explanation  of  the  world  of  How- 
ells,  the  world  of  the  native  American  of 
Anglo-Saxon  origin,  the  world  in  which  psy 
chological  insight  is  never  combined  with 
imagination  and  fancy.  This  explains  not 
only  the  world  of  Howells,  but  the  whole 
American  world. 

Boston  is  its  spiritual  home. 
99 


William  Dean  Howells 

David  Sewell  is  no  longer  a  Boston  clergy 
man  but  a  chief  justice  in  a  western  state, 
blighting  ever  so  many  Lemuel  Barkers  with 
his  decisions.  Members  of  the  Corey  family 
sit  beside  Bartley  Hubbard  in  the  boards  and 
on  the  committees  that  rule  railroads,  banks 
and  stock  exchanges.  That  masterpiece  of 
romanticism,  the  constitution  of  the  United 
States,  is  handed  over  for  interpretation  to  the 
men  of  the  world  of  Howells — the  Howells 
women  may  be  at  it  next — and  in  all  Euripides 
there  is  not  a  tragedy  with  a  catastrophe  so 
dire. 

The  service  rendered  to  our  country  by  the 
realism  of  Howells,  as  opposed  to  the  romanti 
cism  he  deplores,  consists,  then,  in  his  revelation 
to  us  of  the  souls  of  the  Bartley  Hubbards,  the 
David  Sewells,  the  Silas  Laphams.  The  pref 
erence  of  Howells  for  the  realism  which  has 
been  the  instrument  of  his  revelations  is  nat 
ural.  The  imaginative  writer  who  is  primarily 
a  stylist  will  insist  that  style  affords  the  test  of 
greatness  in  literature.  The  novelist  who  ex- 

100 


Imagination 

eels  in  the  delineation  of  types  and  manners 
thinks  no  literature  great  unless  it  reveals  char 
acter.  Hence,  nearly  all  criticism  by  a  man 
of  creative  genius  amounts  to  a  glorification — 
often  unconscious — of  the  particular  thing  in 
which  he  excels.  The  result  has  been  to  dis 
credit  much  criticism  by  writers  of  the  highest 
rank.  This  result  is  unfortunate.  A  master 
of  the  lyric  forms  who  has  no  patience  with 
epics  may  be  excused  for  disparaging  Homer. 
Homer  might  retort  with  crushing  effect  to 
Poe's  contention  that  a  genuine  poem  is  neces 
sarily  short.  The  criticism  that  comes  to  us  in 
the  name  of  a  great  writer  is  of  value  only  when 
that  writer  is  dealing  with  his  particular 
specialty.  For  instance,  we  are  not  to  take 
seriously  Anthony  Trollope's  disparagement 
of  the  novels  of  Wilkie  Collins,  because  Wilkie 
Collins  was  a  master  of  plot  and  Anthony 
Trollope,  who  excelled  in  the  delineation  of 
character,  found  plot  a  disagreeable  tax  on  his 
memory. 

Literary  criticism  from  successful  writers, 
101 


William  Dean  Howells 

and  even  from  "great"  ones,  must  be  received 
with  the  caution  inspired,  let  us  say,  by  a  dis 
sertation  on  surgery  from  a  physician  who  had 
specialized  all  his  life  in  children's  diseases. 

This  is  why  we  have  critics  but  the  mission  of 
the  critic  is  not  to  instruct  writers.  He  should 
instruct  readers. 


102 


IX 

FACTORS  DETERMINING  THE  RANK   OF 
HOWELLS   AS   A   CLASSIC 

LONG  and  brilliant  as  has  been  the  reign  of  the 
author  of  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  in  the 
literary  annals  of  our  land,  no  adequate  inter 
pretation  of  him  has  appeared.  The  idea  of 
Howells  as  a  "successful  writer"  has  lowered 
his  prestige  with  the  young  men  and  women  to 
whom  literature  is  primarily  a  fine  art.  Let 
us  risk  a  review  of  the  whole  subject  from  this 
technical  standpoint. 

The  truth  is  that  notwithstanding  his  "suc 
cess,"  Howells  is  a  great  writer — so  very  great 
a  writer  that  we  are  in  no  danger  of  over 
estimating  his  importance.  No  literary  artist 
of  his  rank  has  yet  appeared  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  world  to  supersede  him.  The  tests  that 
determine  a  matter  of  this  kind  are  simple,  well 

103 


William  Dean  Howells 

known  and  easily  applied.  They  have  refer 
ence  to  style,  plot,  delineation  of  character, 
dialogue  and  mastery  of  the  narrative  art.  By 
narrative  art  is  meant  the  ability  of  a  novelist 
to  tell  his  story  well  as  distinguished  from  the 
merit  of  the  story  itself. 

If  these  tests  be  applied  to  the  work  of 
Howells  in  the  field  of  fiction,  one  is  impressed 
by  the  ease  with  which  he  scores  heavily  on  all 
counts.  He  remains,  for  example,  the  supreme 
stylist.  He  has  never  been  surpassed  by  any 
novelist  in  his  capacity  to  write  dialogue  effec 
tively  and  in  due  relation  to  character  and  plot. 
His  knowledge  of  character  is  manifest  in  his 
feminine  portraits.  Plot  with  him  is  highly 
effective,  even  if  it  take  the  form  of  a  mere 
emotional  outburst  in  a  situation. 

Many  a  successful  writer  emerges  with 
credit  from  but  two  or  three  of  these  tests. 
Howells  comes  brilliantly  through  them  all. 

We  are  therefore  justified  in  anticipating  the 
verdict  of  posterity  on  the  subject  of  the  art  of 
Howells.  The  conception  of  what  constitutes 

104 


Power 


literary  art  may  be  modified  but  as  the  expo 
nent  of  a  school,  the  position  of  Howells  can 
not  be  modified  in  the  historical  sense.  He  will 
retain  at  least  the  importance  of  the  great 
artist  in  any  field,  the  significance  attaching  to 
great  work  always.  His  public  will  endure. 
There  will  be  readers  of  Howells  for  centuries. 

The  essential  fact  regarding  the  work  of 
William  Dean  Howells  is  that  it  discloses  a 
great  literary  artist.  Howells  is  not  an  artist 
only.  He  is  a  novelist  of  power  although  not, 
perhaps,  of  the  widest  scope.  He  has  a 
precious  insight  into  the  heart  of  woman.  He 
can  exploit  .the  dramatic  value  >  of  a  situation 
without  descending  to  mere  theatricals.  He 
knows  a  story  when  he  finds  one  and  he  devotes 
himself  to  the  task  of  telling  it. 

Other  merits  of  the  kind  are  his.  The  equip 
ment  of  William  Dean  Howells  as  a  novelist, 
apart  from  his  ability  as  critic  of  life  and  liter 
ature,  places  him  in  the  very  greatest  com 
pany.  Above  and  beyond  all  this  is  the  fact 
that  Howells  is  so  great  a  literary  artist.  His 

105 


William  Dean  Howells 

artistry  is  in  perfect  proportion  with  his  effect 
as  a  whole.  The  cunning  of  his  workmanship 
resembles  the  sartorial  effects  of  a  Beau  Brum- 
mel  or  a  Duke  of  Buckingham  at  his  best — 
the  style  is  magnificent,  but  too  perfectly  ap 
propriate  to  lapse  into  affectation  or  run  into 
excess. 

William  Dean  Howells  is  therefore  a  master 
of  style,  a  great  writer.  His  manner  of  saying 
a  thing  has  an  interest  of  its  own  without 
reference  to  the  thing  he  happens  to  be  saying. 
The  English  language  has  proved  singularly 
responsive  to  the  touch  of  William  Dean 
Howells.  It  yields  to  him  all  its  subtleties  and 
it  never  betrays  him  into  the  unintelligibilities 
of  writers  who  are  stylists  and  nothing  more. 
The  style  of  Howells  is  so  highly  individualized 
that  a  critic  would  soon  recognize  his  work, 
however  anonymously  purveyed. 

The  beauty  of  his  style  is  never  sacrificed  to 
its  individuality.  It  is  not  a  style  that  has  been 
caught  from  anyone  else.  Neither  is  it  the 
style  to  which  his  reader  must  bring  a  literary 

106 


A  Classic 


sophistication  of  any  kind.  He  can  be  read 
with  an  exquisite  ease. 

This  aspect  of  the  greatness  of  William 
Dean  Howells  as  a  writer  explains  the  perman 
ence  of  his  position  as  a  classic.  One,  at  least, 
of  his  tales  will  last  as  long  as,  say,  "The  Vicar 
of  Wakefield,"  and  for  much  the  same  reason. 

The  reason  is  style. 

Much  confusion  of  thought,  to  repeat  what 
I  say  elsewhere,  has  been  occasioned  by  the 
statement  that  before  anyone  can  tell  a  story, 
he  must  have  a  story  to  tell.  The  saying  is  glib, 
but  it  overlooks  the  fact  that  every  one  of  us 
has  a  story  to  tell.  Even  the  idiot  has  his  story 
to  tell,  and  the  child  has  his  and  the  woman  has 
hers.  To  get  the  story  told — that  is  the  agony. 
If  that  poor  old  man  could  but  get  his  story 
told  in  the  right  way ! 

The  secret  of  style  is  all  in  that. 

Consider  Hamlet. 

With  all  deference  to  Doctor  Dryasdust  and 
in  defiance  of  the  theatrical  managers,  be  it 
noted  that  Hamlet  lives  through  the  vitality  of 

107  " 


William  Dean  Howells 

style.  Hamlet,  like  all  things  real  as  litera 
ture,  is  a  triumph  of  style.  Style,  in  its 
essence,  is  a  mystery.  William  Dean  Howells 
is  invested,  as  a  writer,  with  this  baffling  atmos 
phere  of  genius.  The  style  he  manifests  with 
such  beauty  of  manner  and  such  finish  is  shot 
through  and  through  with  humor.  This  humor 
is  masculine  in  its  vigor  and  feminine  in  its 
intuition.  It  colors  his  style  somewhat  as  a 
sympathetic  moon  will  saturate  a  summer 
night.  Then  that  effect  of  humor  will  be  with 
drawn  and  one  of  tenderness  or  of  tragedy  even 
will  be  substituted. 

And  love!  There  are  emotional  phases  of 
the  style  of  William  Dean  Howells  during 
which  we  all  swim  in  love  or  swoon  with  love. 
Never  do  we  feel  ridiculous  then  or  betrayed. 

It  is  not  merely  that  William  Dean  Howells 
knows  all  the  sweet  anguishes  of  love,  although 
we  know  that  he  must.  He  conveys  the  poetry 
of  the  passion  through  the  resisting  medium  of 
a  prosaic  setting.  His  American  environment 
never  subdues  his  artistry.  He  can  tell  a  beau- 

108 


Decadence 


tiful  story  about  the  ugliest  thing.  His  real 
ism  is  unsparing. 

Closely  associated  with  the  perfection  of  the 
style  of  Howells  is  the  perfection  of  his  form. 
The  structure  of  one  of  his  novels  is  as  rare  and 
as  delicate  as  any  Greek  vase  over  which  a 
Keats  has  raved.  No  French  novelist  excels 
Howells  in  giving  form  to  the  structure  of  a 
tale  and  not  one  Englishman  of  his  period  can 
approach  him. 

In  any  consideration  of  the  merits  of  How 
ells  as  an  artist,  we  are  impressed  by  the  extent 
to  which  he  displays  the  more  glorious  charac 
teristics  of  the  school  so  often  referred  to  as 
decadent.  However  repellent  we  may  find  the 
themes  of  a  decadent  writer,  we  have  sometimes 
to  admit  that  his  imagination  is  more  construc 
tive  than  that  of  his  Philistine  brother,  his 
fancy  livelier,  his  metaphor  more  vivid,  his 
insight  sometimes,  odd  as  this  must  seem,  more 
spiritual.  The  very  striking  fact  about  How 
ells  is  that  he  brings  to  the  service  of  an  un 
blushing  and  unconscious  Philistinism,  in 

109 


William  Dean  Howells 

perfect  good  faith,  all  the  shining  genius  that 
transfigures  sin  in  the  verses  of  a  Baudelaire  or 
the  prose  of  an  Oscar  Wilde. 

The  genius  of  Howells  is  a  sister  to  theirs, 
but  we  find  it  in  the  position  of  Mary  Mag 
dalen  after  her  conversion.  An  atmosphere 
totally  different  from  that  of  decadence  is 
breathed  by  the  heroines  of  Howells,  but  the 
art  with  which  their  soulj  are  bared  to  us  is 
the  authentic  art  that  has  come  down  to  us 
through  the  few  masters  of  the  written  word. 
Shelley  tells  us  that  all  the  poets  have  in  reality 
written  but  one  poem  and  it  might  be  added 
to  this  that  the  supreme  prose  writers  have  had 
but  one  style — the  greatest. 

All  literary  art  is  in  its  perfect  exemplifica 
tions  the  same  and  the  work  of  a  Howells  is  like 
that  of  a  Balzac,  the  work  of  a  Turgenieff  like 
that  of  a  Flaubert  even.  Temperaments, 
characters,  situations  differ,  but  literary  art  is 
to  Bourget  what  it  was  to  Catullus.  No  mis 
conception  could  be  so  complete  as  that  which 
ascribes  the  art  of  William  Dean  Howells  to 

110 


Technique 


this  "influence"  or  that.  He  has  given  the 
world  an  account  of  his  literary  passions  but 
those  passions  could  not  make  him  a  writer. 

Howells  being  a  born  writer,  his  technique  is 
instinctive.  His  greatness  has  been  obscured 
to  his  countrymen  in  the  second  decade  of  this 
century  by  their  lack  of  enthusiasm  for  our 
national  literature.  A  quite  preposterous  sub 
jection  of  the  American  mind  to  the  provincial 
ism  of  all  British  literary  standards  has  kept  it 
from  an  adequate  estimate  of  Howells. 

His  artistry  is  suspected,  it  is  surmised  to 
exist,  but  no  critic  of  consequence  has  yet 
proved  bold  enough  to  assign  Howells  his 
rightful  position  as  one  of  the  few  great  lit 
erary  artists  in  the  department  of  prose. 
British  writers  who  are  his  inferiors  in  capacity 
and  far  below  him  in  achievement  get  a  recog 
nition  in  America  that  Howells  missed  in  the 
days  of  his  greatest  vogue. 

He  is  easily  the  greatest  of  the  American 
victims  of  the  British  literary  superstition. 
His  acceptance  of  the  Victorian  cult  of  the 

111 


William  Dean  Howells 

family  is  another  explanation  of  a  sort  of  neg 
lect  into  which  his  genius  has  fallen.  In  the 
world  of  William  Dean  Howells  all  human 
relationships  are  those  of  American  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  either  with  one  another  or  with  their 
inferiors. 

Culture  consists  of  a  very  ludicrous  conde 
scension  of  attitude  to  this  country  on  the  part 
of  New  Englanders  who  have  lived  in  Italy. 

A  Howells  hero  has  an  inexpressibly  amus 
ing  respect  for  a  lady.  A  Howells  lady  is  in 
conceivably  Anglo-Saxon,  incredibly  Philisti 
nised  by  European  influences  at  first  or  second 
hand  and  never  for  a  moment  suspecting  that. 

She  carries  on  the  most  extraordinary  con 
versations  in  a  highly  sophisticated  manner, 
during  which  she  is  appalled,  or  retains  her 
presence  of  mind  sufficiently  to  make  a  charac 
teristic  observation  in  her  usual  manner.  The 
supreme  object  of  the  earthly  existence  of  men 
and  women  in  a  Howells  atmosphere  is  to  have 
things  go  on  as  usual.  There  is  an  agitating 
possibility  that  they  may  not. 

112 


Epigram 


Upon  this  possibility  the  plot  may  turn. 

The  dialogue  in  a  Howells  novel  is  almost 
invariably  managed  with  a  consummate  artis 
try.  No  writer  of  fiction  shows  an  easier 
mastery  of  this  most  difficult  of  all  the  depart 
ments  of  his  art.  The  characters  in  a  Howells 
novel  reveal  themselves  completely  in  what 
they  say.  Their  conversation  is  now  and  then 
elaborate,  but  it  has  a  definite  relation  to  the 
progress  of  events  and  never  does  it  inspire 
dread  or  an  eagerness  to  skip  a  page.  All  the 
resources  of  his  genius  are.  brought  by  Howells 
to"bear  upon  the  quality  of  his  dialogue.  The 
dialogue  in  "The  Kentons"  is  at  times  a  mira 
cle  of  effect.  His  technique  here  has  been  un- 
blushingly  imitated  for  a  generation. 

Speaking  in  a  somewhat  general  way,  it  is  to 
be  noted  that  a  Howells  hero  does  not  deal 
much  in  epigram  and  a  Howells  heroine  does 
not  get  a  paradox  thrown  at  her  in  a  dozen 
chapters.  The  Howells  world  is  filled  with 
middle  aged  men  whose  cynicism  is  of  the 
quaintest  Victorian  kind.  The  background  is 

113 


William  Dean  Howells 

usually  that  United  States  of  America  which 
was  so  much  more  Victorian  than  the  Prince 
Consort. 

All  standards  of  conduct  are  Anglo-Saxon 
to  the  really  nice  people  of  the  Howells  world. 
We  are  concerned  for  the  most  part  with  the 
affairs  of  people  in  easy  circumstances  who  are 
interesting  to  us  not  on  their  own  account,  but 
because  of  the  glory  they  derive  from  the  mag 
nificence  of  their  creator's  art. 

It  is  a  dazzling  art  and  that  art  makes  him  a 
classic. 


114 


X 


HOWELLS   AS   THE   EXPONENT   OF   OUR 
MANNERS 

THE  method  of  William  Dean  Howells,  his 
characteristic  practice  of  the  art  of  fiction,  will 
yet  sustain  an  important  relation  to  a  con 
troversy  that  agitates  historians.  Is  histoiy 
one  of  the  sciences  or  is  it  a  literary  art? 
Many  a  mile  of  typewriter  ribbons  has  un 
wound  itself  to  keep  this  discussion  going  and 
we  remain  uncertain  still  whether  the  form  of 
history  is  that  of  narrative.  Prescott  is  no  his 
torian,  according  to  one  faction.  The  novelist 
who  adequately  portrays  the  manners  of  his 
period  is  a  historian,  in  the  light  of  another 
theory  of  the  subject,  at  any  rate.  Those  his 
torians  who  plume  themselves  upon  their 
"science"  insist  that  their  concern  is  essentially 
with  manners  and  with  morals,  and  with  the 
economic  conditions  underlying  them. 

115 


William  Dean  Howells 

From  this  standpoint  and,  perhaps,  without 
suspecting  this  aspect  of  his  work,  Howells  has 
become  the  social  historian  of  a  formative 
period  in  the  annals  of  his  native  land.  This 
was  made  possible — I  am  now  considering 
Howells  the  historian  of  manners  apart  from 
the  artist — by  the  intimacy  of  his  acquaintance 
with  our  national  character.  He  has  no  illu 
sions  on  the  subject  of  that  character.  We 
Americans  are  not  a  gifted  people,  not  a  nation 
of  artists,  like  the  French,  nor  a  land  in  which 
everyone  has  at  least  a  touch  of  genius,  like 
Italy,  or  a  tinge  of  metaphysics,  or  of  piety, 
like  aliens  under  still  other  skies.  This  ac 
counts  for  the  lack  of  color  in  the  whole  world 
of  Howells,  but  he  brings  out  a  point  which  I 
think  is  not  at  all  apparent  to  commentators 
upon  our  manners  and  our  morals,  our  ideals 
and  our  standards.  These  are  all  determined 
for  us  by  native  Americans  of  Anglo-Saxon 
origin.  They  are  our  "best  people."  We  ape 
them.  We  are  ashamed  of  anything  which 
establishes  a  gulf  between  ourselves  and  them. 

116 


Helen 


If  genius  or  efficiency  establish  such  a  gulf, 
away  with  both.  We  live  in  dread  of  not  being 
just  the  sort  of  person  whom  Helen  Harkness 
can  possibly  have  heard  of. 

Helen,  as  I  may  be  excused  for  observing,  is 
the  heroine  of  "A  Woman's  Reason,"  one  of 
the  innumerable  young  ladies  living  in  that 
extraordinary  Boston  of  Howells's.  She  is  in 
love  in  her  Boston  fashion — I  do  not  mean  at 
all  to  be  flippant — and  at  the  period  to  which  J 
refer  she  is  obliged  to  take  refuge  in  an  ordi 
nary  boarding  house.  Helen  was  amused  by 
some  of  the  talk  at  the  table,  and  still  she  was 
tortured  by  a  doubt  respecting  the  Evanses. 
"She  could  not  tell  exactly  why;  one  never  can 
tell  exactly  why,  especially  if  one  is  a  lady." 
But  Helen  was  painfully  aware  of  having 
never  heard  of  these  Evanses.  Helen  was  un 
certain  in  the  Boston  manner  of  people  of 
whom  she  had  never  heard.  The  effectiveness 
with  which  Helen  in  this  situation  is  made  to 
stand  for  Boston  in  all  the  tremendous  implica 
tions,  social  and  cultural,  of  that  geographical 

117 


William  Dean  Howells 

term,  makes  "A  Woman's  Reason"  important 
as  a  historical  document,  apart  from  its  interest 
as  a  work  of  art.  The  Boston  attitude  to  New 
York  is  beautifully  realized  for  the  benefit  of 
the  student  of  our  unofficial  aristocracy.  Like 
so  many  of  the  Howells  tales,  this  masterpiece 
among  them  suggests  that  our  institutions  exist 
for  the  production  of  lovely  young  ladies  for 
the  privileged  few. 

The  privileged  few  have  standards  which  are 
fixed  or  fluctuating  according  to  the  tempera 
ments  of  these  young  ladies.  I  note  the 
amused  skepticism  of  the  reference  by  Howells 
himself  to  Woman's  theory  that  she  makes  and 
unmakes  the  man  in  her  life.  I  suspect  him  of 
believing  that  women  are  megalomaniacs  and 
certainly  his  best  women  are  conceited.  Still, 
the  manners  of  our  American  world — the 
"moeurs,"  as  Balzac  would  say,  the  "mores," 
to  go  back  pedantically  to  Cicero — are  the 
manners  of  women.  They  are  the  manners  of 
people  who  must  protect  themselves  not  only 
from  the  vulgarity  of  an  outside  world,  but  also 

118 


Efficiency 


from  its  efficiency.    Efficiency  is  a  menace  to 
these  people — the  efficiency  of  the  vulgar! 

In  this  matter  of  efficiency,  we  Americans, 
according  to  Howells,  and  I  believe  him,  have 
neither  manners  nor  morals  at  all.  The  only 
character  in  Howells  who  is  at  the  same  time  a 
native  American  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin  and  a 
man  of  manners  in  the  fine  French  sense,  is  the 
head  of  the  clan  of  Corey.  This  irresistible 
Bostonian  makes  his  appearance  in  nearly  all 
the  great  Howells  novels,  and  he  is  no  less  sig 
nificant,  no  less  American  in  figure  as  an  acci 
dent  of  environment  than  is  the  Leatherstock- 
ing  of  Cooper.  This  man  Corey  is  an  authen 
tic  example  of  genius.  He  creates  nothing 
himself,  but  his  personality  is  inspirational.  A 
true  artist  would  derive  at  once  from  Corey 
that  most  precious  of  all  things,  a  consciousness 
of  being  understood.  The  society  of  artists  is 
the  only  society  for  which  he  really  cares.  He 
has  the  characteristics  of  his  temperament, 
which  include  the  manners  of  the  "humanities." 
Corey  knows  how  to  treat  an  artist.  This 

119 


William  Dean  Howells 

amounts  to  saying  that  Corey  is  a  peculiar  per 
son  to  encounter  in  his  native  land,  where 
artists  have  necessarily  to  be  rated  according  to 
their  commercial  success.  In  the  botanical 
sense  of  the  term,  Corey  is  a  "sport."  The 
Corey  family  must  take  care  of  him  as  if  he 
were  a  sort  of  lunatic.  Corey  is,  from  the 
standpoint  of  what  he  signifies,  the  key  to 
Howells  as  a  social  historian.  There  is  no 
place  for  him  in  American  society,  because  he 
does  not  make  progress  pecuniarily.  Corey 
retrogrades  pecuniarily.  If  he  had  added  to 
his  wealth  as  he  added  to  his  collection  of  beau 
tiful  things,  he  would  not  have  been  out  of 
place,  exotic,  daft  over  this  hobby  and  that. 

In  the  clarity  with  which  he  exposes  all  this, 
Howells  is  the  supreme  historian  of  manners, 
one  of  the  great  psychologists.  Only  in  his 
novels  do  we  have  a  reflection  of  the  gray  pre 
dominating  in  our  national  life.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  does  full  justice  to  the  physical  com 
fort  we  affect.  Nothing  is  more  real  than  the 
gormandizing  of  his  rich  people  living  in  the 

120 


Snobbery 


country,  and  yet  he  seizes  and  conveys  the  ease 
of  a  boarding  house  where  the  table  is  good. 
We  are  edified  by  one  in  "April  Hopes."  The 
other  is  the  scene  of  Helen's  tragedies  in  "A 
Woman's  Reason,"  one  of  the  few  novels  of 
"manners"  that  can  be  called  great.  It  may 
have  been  written  for  the  purpose  of  elucidat 
ing  the  essentially  American  idea  of  what  con 
stitutes  a  lady.  The  heroine  is  a  lady  in  that 
sense.  The  whole  of  her  world  is  prostrate 
before  her  in  consequence.  It  must  be  con 
ceded  that  Helen  is  a  nice  girl.  She  is  a  fine 
flower  of  the  caste  system  of  cultivation,  like  so 
many  other  Howells  ladies.  What  particu 
larly  strikes  one  in  any  consideration  of  Helen 
is  her  inefficiency.  She  cannot  turn  her  hand 
to  anything  that  will  yield  an  honest  living. 
She  paints  things  for  which  there  is  no  aesthetic 
justification.  She  writes  unprintable  book 
reviews.  She  trims  impossible  bonnets.  In 
all  this  waste  of  her  own  time,  as  well  as  of  the 
time  of  other  people,  the  heroine  is  tolerated, 
endured,  put  up  with,  because  she  is  a  lady. 

121 


William  Dean  Howells 

She  belongs  to  that  exalted  caste.  This  in 
stinct  for  caste  in  the  native  American  of 
Anglo-Saxon  origin  has  been  exploited  by 
Howells  in  nearly  all  his  studies  of  our  man 
ners,  but  in  the  misadventures  of  Helen  the 
inefficiency  of  the  caste  emerges.  One  is 
indeed  astonished  that  American  ladies, and 
gentlemen  of  the  best  birth  and  breeding  can  be 
so  extraordinarily  mediocre,  so  desperately  in 
efficient.  That  they  make  a  merit  of  this 
inefficiency,  that  they  cultivate  a  kind  of  pride 
in  it  as  a  badge  of  social  superiority  is  to  be 
expected.  An  aristocracy  always  does  that 
sort  of  thing,  and  in  our  manners  we  Ameri 
cans  are  the  most  aristocratic  republic  that  ever 
made  a  mockery  of  the  rights  of  man! 


122 


XI 

THE   AMERICAN   ARISTOCRACY   AND   THE   COREY 
FAMILY 

IN  this  clever  exposure  of  the  American's 
antipathy  to  democracy,  Howells  has  occasion 
ally  gone  far.  "A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes" 
is  an  instance  of  what  I  mean.  American 
inaccessibility  to  ideas  is  neatly  revealed  in  the 
course  of  that  adventure.  I  think,  neverthe 
less,  that  Helen  Harkness  is  the  type  of  native 
American  inefficiency  in  its  Anglo-Saxon 
feminine  form.  She  is  very  lovable,  very  in 
competent,  very  refined,  very  much  of  a  lady, 
very  much  of  a  failure,  acutely  conscious  of  her 
social  position.  The  difficulty  with  her  is  that 
she  has  inherited  the  inadequacy  of  those  whose 
ancestors  came  over  in  the  Mayflower.  The 
British  aristocrat  with  whom  she  discusses  her 
caste  calls  it  the  Mayblossom!  It  seems  that 

123 


William  Dean  Howells 

the  caste  loses  nothing  by  spinning  although 
it  would  never  do  to  brew.  The  British  aristo 
crat  can  make  nothing  of  it. 

I  think  Howells  brings  out  very  clearly  in 
all  this  the  passion  for  aristocracy  that  is  at  the 
foundation  of  the  American  character,  that 
awe  of  the  "best"  people  that  no  Anglo-Saxon 
can  feel  for  the  merely  efficient.  Lieutenant 
Fenton,  for  instance,  although  an  officer  in  the 
United  States  Navy,  incarnates  caste,  and 
naturally  he  is  the  ideal  mate  for  Helen.  No 
hero  could  be  more  of  a  hero  but  one  follows 
his  tremendous  adventures  with  an  uneasy  feel 
ing  that  he  would  die  bravely  and  that  this  is  all 
he  ever  would  succeed  in  doing.  So  we  take 
our  leave  of  him  as  the  husband  of  Helen  in  a 
big  navy  yard,  where,  I  suppose,  she  had  sons 
and  daughters  as  charming,  as  inefficient  and  as 
high  caste  as  their  parents. 

Although  all  these  things  emerge  thus  clear 
ly,  and  perhaps  with  no  design  on  the  part  of 
Howells  himself,  he  renders  his  countrymen 
and  especially  his  countrywomen  an  incidental 

124 


The  Mayflower 

service  by  revealing  their  perfect  charm.  The 
imbecility  of  the  British  has  filled  the  world 
with  an  idea  that  native  Americans  have  bad 
manners.  Apart  from  the  amusement  neces 
sarily  inspired  by  British  incapacity  to  decide 
whether  any  manners  are  either  good  or  bad, 
there  is  the  difficulty  of  American  charm  to 
complicate  the  discussion.  The  manners  of  a 
person  who  is  charming  are  likely  to  seem  good, 
and  all  the  people  to  whom  Howells  introduces 
us  are  charming,  some  in  one  way  and  some  in 
another.  Those  rural  New  Englanders  of  his 
are  irresistible,  whether  we  encounter  them  in 
their  parlors  or  in  their  kitchens.  They  are 
positively  Greek  in  their  alertness,  suggesting 
in  all  they  do  and  say  that  the  people  in  that 
Mayflower  had  left  their  British  heaviness  be 
hind  them. 

This  characteristic  charm  of  the  American  I 
people  is  at  its  best  in  those  Coreys  to  whom  I  f 
have  referred  before.     They  have  managed  to 
get  into  their  heads  an  idea  that  efficiency  is  j 
more  important  from  a  social  point  of  view  than  \ 

125 


William  Dean  Howells 

money  itself.  The  women  of  the  Corey  family 
never  quite  assimilate  that  doctrine.  We  see 
them  sticking  to  their  side  of  the  house  while 
Lemuel  Barker  reads  aloud  to  papa.  The 
eagerness  of  that  poor  papa  to  find  somebody 
among  the  native  Americans  with  whom  he  can 
exchange  ideas  instead  of  the  suggestions  or 
the  shadows  o£  ideas  leads  him  into  such  queer 
company! I  A  panic  of  the  well  bred  kind 
ensues  when  a  young  man  of  the  farjiily  weds 
outside  the  purple.  1  As  we  trace  these  Coreys 
from  "one  of  these  novels  to  another,  we  seem 
to  find  Howells  making  ever  clearer  the  truth 
that  we  Americans  are  a  monarchical  people 
living  by  a  historical  accident  under  a  republi 
can  form  of  government.  The  native  stock 
lacks  the  genius  to  express  the  poetry  of  repub 
lican  institutions.  To  Helen  Harkness,  for 
instance,  and  to  her  circle,  and  in  the  circle  of 
the  Coreys  this  republicanism  of  our  institu 
tions  is  a  jest.  To  the  American  poor  it  is  no 
jest.  The  American  poor  are  a  republican 
poor  because  of  the  public  schools,  just  as  the 

126 


Old  Corey 


American  rich  are  a  monarchical  rich  because 
of  the  private  schools  and  in  saying  this  I  have 
reference  solely  to  manners  as  elucidated 
through  the  realism  of  Howells  and  not  to  any 
thing  particularly  political.  I  am  thinking 
among  other  things  of  Helen  Harkness's  atti 
tude  to  her  fellow  boarders  and  of  Miss  Vane 
and  of  Sybil  in  their  relations  with  Lem. 

The  astonishing  thing  about  this  native 
American  aristocracy  as  we  study  its  manners 
in  the  novels  of  Howells — he  is  the  student  of 
manners  in  the  wide  sense — is  its  blank  uncon 
sciousness  of  its  own  limitations.  Lord  Rain- 
ford,  going  about  the  New  England  of  Miss 
Harkness,  sees  these  limitations.  To  that  ex 
ceptional  member  of  the  Corey  famliy,  freak 
that  he  is,  these  limitations  are  painfully 
obvious.  He  knows  that  he  is  good  for 
nothing.  No  other  member  of  that  exalted 
caste  has  any  such  attitude  to  himself.  They 
have  all,  these  people,  a  sense  of  being  very 
superior,  even  that  wretched  newspaper  man 
of  a  Bartley  Hubbard.  As  for  the  "intellect- 

127 


William  Dean  Howells 

uals"  of  the  Howells  world,  the  Ford  who  loves 
Egeria,  and  the  Evans  who  accepts  the  fash 
ionable  young  lady's  book  review  because  she 
is  of  such  a  good  family,  and  all  the  rest,  they 
accept  the  monarchical  manners  of  the  best 
American  society  with  no  suspicion  that  there 
could  be  any  other. 

As  an  exponent  of  American  manners,  then, 
Howells  shows  us  up.  We  are  prone  on  our 
faces  before  a  monarchical  idol.  This  might 
be  less  important  were  it  not  for  the  appalling 
incapacity  of  our  best  people.  They  are  all 
so  second  rate  that  their  monarchical  manners 
do  not  imperil  our  institutions  at  all.  These 
native  Americans  fumble  at  democracy  pre 
cisely  as  they  potter  around  "Art."  There  is 
a  perpetual  prattle  among  the  heroes  and  the 
heroines  of  Howells  about  something  or  other 
that  is  meant  to  convey  the  effect  of  culture. 
An  effect  is  conveyed.  It  is  an  effect  only — 
like  the  effect  of  rain  in  a  theater  when  a  piece 
of  sheet-iron  is  shaken  behind  the  scenes. 

The  closeness  of  the  scrutiny  bestowed  by 
128 


Cornelia 


Howells  upon  his  types  of  character  makes  his 
pictures  of  lowly  American  life  no  less  signifi 
cant  than  his  studies  of  the  manners  of  our 
ineffectual  aristocracy.  No  one  seems  to  have 
studied  the  manners  of  our  native  American 
Anglo-Saxon  poor  with  such  results  from  an 
artistic  standpoint  as  Howells.  Cornelia  Root, 
for  instance,  who  helped  her  mother  "take 
boarders"  and  then  went  to  Boston  to  study 
"Art,"  is  the  creation  of  a  great  artist.  She 
has  no  illusions,  this  Cornelia,  and  she  is  true  to 
her  breed  in  being  destitute  of  genius,  but  how 
bravely  she  paints  on  in  her  poverty!  Her 
character  is  that  of  steel.  Her  words  are  put 
together  remorselessly,  her  meaning  stands  out 
like  a  bare  tree  against  a  winter  snow.  Yet 
how  interesting  she  is,  what  humor  she  has. 
She  has  the  vivid  reality  of  every  character  in 
Howells  because  she  is  "a  study  of  manners," 
as  the  French  say,  and  she  has  the  inexplicable 
charm  of  the  cold,  stern  New  England  woman 
and  her  humor,  her  rare,  fascinating  unsparing 
humor.  And  then  there  is  S'tira  Dudley  with 

129 


William  Dean  Howells 

her  mature  woman  friend,  striving  for  that 
place  in  the  paper  box  factory  and  looking  so 
fashionable  and  clinging  so  fondly  to  her  young 
man,  much  to  his  embarrassment.  Nor  must  I 
omit  even  in  this  hasty  mention  of  some  impres 
sive  effects  in  character  the  bloomers  of  Mrs. 
Barker.  What  tragedy  unspeakable  is  made 
to  invest  them,  a  note  of  doom  and  gloom  and 
how,  through  all  that,  the  Americanism  of  the 
detail  speaks  home  and  fills  one  with  a  sort  of 
silent  pride  in  the  wearer.  She  was  our  coun 
trywoman. 

Our  countrymen!  Our  countrywomen!  It 
is  they  who  come  before  us  in  the  pages  of  the 
great  historian  of  our  manners.  If  Howells 
has  no  illusions,  he  does  establish  the  greatness 
of  the  New  Englander  on  the  moral  plane. 
His  American  is  a  hero.  He  accounts  for  the 
renown  of  the  Boston  woman  as  the  glory  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race. 


130 


XII 

THE   HOWELLS   PHILOSOPHY   OF    WOMAN 

MEN  show  their  youth  and  inexperience  when 
they  regard  any  relation  with  a  woman  as  a  sort 
of  game  to  be  played  as  an  exhibition  of  su 
perior  skill.  I  think  this  is  an  important  prin 
ciple  deducible  from  the  attitude  of  William 
Dean  Howells  to  woman  as  a  social  institution. 
It  is  difficult  to  understand  why  he  has  been 
deemed  a  critic  of  woman,  her  enemy.  It 
would  be  easy  to  pick  out  of  such  tales  as  "A 
Fearful  Responsibility"  and  "A  Chance  Ac 
quaintance"  of  the  earlier  period,  or  out  of  "A 
Hazard  of  New  Fortunes"  which  began  the 
what  I  may  consider  the  later  period  of  How- 
ells,  ever  so  many  remarks  which  suggest  lack 
of  faith  in  woman.  That  method  is  not  fair. 
One  ought  to  take  the  tales  and  essays  and 
farces  and  novels  as  a  whole — Howells  has 

131 


William  Dean  Howells 

written  some  sixty  or  seventy  books,  remember 
—and  deduce  the  philosophy  from  them.  It  is 
practical  rather  than  profound.  I  have  tried 
more  than  once  to  extract  this  philosophy.  I 
seem  ever  to  get  the  same  result.  No  man  ever 
wrote  great  poetry  unless  he  revered  poetry,  or 
painted  a  great  picture  unless  he  glorified  the 
magic  of  mere  paint  or  had  a  great  love  affair 
unless  he  looked  into  the  heart  of  woman  rever 
ently.  That  is  the  gist  of  much  in  the  writings 
of  Howells.  The  words  are  my  own.  The 
gospel  is  his.  The  message  is  ever  the  same 
but  its  theme  varies.  How  wonderfully  he  re 
veals  his  knowledge  of  woman  in  "A  Modern 
Instance": 

The  spectacle  of  a  love  affair  in  which  the  woman 
gives  more  of  her  heart  than  the  man  gives  of  his  is  so 
pitiable  that  we  are  apt  to  attribute  a  kind  of  merit  to 
her,  as  if  it  were  a  voluntary  self-sacrifice  for  her  to 
love  more  than  her  share.  Not  only  other  men,  but 
other  women,  look  on  with  this  canonizing  compassion; 
for  women  have  a  lively  power  of  imagining  themstelves 
in  the  place  of  any  sister  who  suffers  in  matters  of 
sentiment,  and  are  eager  to  espouse  the  common  cause  in 
commiserating  her.  Each  of  them  pictures  herself  simi- 

132 


Love's  Exchange 

larly  wronged  or  slighted  by  the  man  she  likes  best, 
and  feels  how  cruel  it  would  be  if  he  were  to  care  less 
for  her  than  she  for  him;  and  for  the  time  being,  in 
order  to  realize  the  situation,  she  loads  him  with  all 
the  sins  of  omission  proper  to  the  culprit  in  the  alien 
case.  But  possibly  there  is  a  compensation  in  merely 
loving,  even  where  the  love  given  is  out  of  all  propor 
tion  to  the  love  received. 

How  strange  women  are !  That  is  the  con 
clusion  to  which  all  men  come,  provided  they 
have  studied  women  to  any  purpose.  I  have 
talked  about  women  with  many  men  who  knew 
them  and  in  the  end  they  arrived,  in  some  form 
or  another,  at  the  same  conclusion :  how  strange 
women  are!  This  is  the  lesson  of  "April 
Hopes." 

Never  lose  a  fear  of  women,  a  dread  of  them, 
a  species  of  awe.  Otherwise  one  risks  the  fate 
of  the  tamer  of  lions  who,  through  familiarity 
with  such  powerful  creatures,  grew  careless  and 
was  devoured.  I  would  call  this  the  gospel  of 
"Doctor  Breen's  Practice." 

No  man  ever  persuaded  a  woman  to  do  what 
she  did  not  want  to  do.  Many  a  woman  has 

133 


William  Dean  Howells 

persuaded  a  man  to  do  what  he  hated  even  to 
think  of.  In  general,  it  seems  true  that  women 
despise  a  man  who  allows  them  to  persuade  him 
into  a  course  condemned  by  his  own  judgment. 
There  is,  too,  the  odd  fact  to  consider  that 
women  think  very  little  of  the  man  who  permits 
his  infatuation  to  carry  him  too  far.  Of 
course,  infatuation  must  go  far — yet  not  too 
far.  The  trouble  is  to  know  where  to  draw  the 
line.  The  man  who  knew  was  Mark  Antony, 
but  he  was  mature  and  so  was  the  woman  for 
whom  he  threw  the  world  away.  I  get  this  les 
son  from  "Indian  Summer." 

To  love  and  have  one's  love  returned — that 
is  life.  The  rest  is  not  worth  while,  even  to 
Napoleon.  Who  would  not  prefer  the  lips  of 
the  woman  who  yields  them  gladly,  to  many 
victories  like  Austerlitz?  The  qualities  in  men 
that  appeal  most  to  women  are  noble  qualities. 
Jesus  won  the  love  of  more  women  than  Don 
Juan  ever  even  met.  The  victories  won  by  a 
man  over  a  woman  are  always  too  dearly  paid 
for.  Test  carefully,  before  believing  it,  any 

134 


Never  Lie! 


statement  regarding  women  that  comes  to  you 
in  the  form  of  an  epigram.  Women  are  in 
stinctively  so  prone  to  hero  worship  that  they 
regard  with  veneration  the  man  whom  they  can 
not  corrupt.  Howells  says  these  things  in 
many  ways  in  his  various  books. 

If  I  get  the  meaning  of  Howells  in  his  in 
quiry  into  the  affairs  of  the  Corey  family,  I 
should  never  let  a  woman  lure  me  into  a  lie. 
Women  take  refuge  in  lies  because  their  sense 
of  reality  is  defective  or,  rather,  the  reality  with 
which  they  are  in  intimate  contact  is  not  the 
reality  of  men,  the  reality  with  which  men  deal. 
Hence  accuracy  of  statement  is  of  less  im 
portance  morally  in  a  woman's  life  than  in  a 
man's.  Never,  then,  be  lured  by  a  woman  into 
telling  a  lie.  Always  be  truthful  to  a  woman. 
It  gives  a  man  an  extraordinary  power  over 
her. 

Even  very  bad  women  love  to  be  treated  as 
if  they  were  very  good  and  they  will  become 
good — for  the  sake  of  your  approval.  But  the 
woman  who  can  be  very  good  or  rather  seem 

135 


William  Dean  Howells 

very  good  for  your  sake  can  be  very  wicked  for 
some  other  man's  sake.  The  man  who  pre 
sumes  upon  accident  or  circumstance  to  become 
familiar  with  a  woman  or  to  treat  her  with  any 
lack  of  personal  respect  is  intellectually  second- 
rate.  A  woman  loves  to  see  a  man  work.  She 
has  more  respect  for  a  man  who  can  work  than 
she  has  for  a  man  who  can  make  love.  She 
can  teach  a  man  to  make  love.  She  cannot 
teach  a  man  how  to  work.  Few  delusions  re 
specting  women  are  more  credited  than  the  one 
which  attributes  to  them  a  sneaking  respect  for 
a  rake.  This  is  the  moral  of  "The  Lady  of  the 
Aroostook"  in  particular,  but  it  is  drawn  else 
where. 

The  difficulty  in  teaching  a  man  any  truth 
respecting  women  is  found  in  the  fact  that  what 
is  worth  knowing  about  them  involves  a  plati 
tude.  For  instance,  the  assertion  that  only 
good  women  are  worth  while  is  a  platitude— 
and  how  true!  Women  always  estimate  too 
highly  the  power  of  a  woman's  beauty  over  a 
man.  Beautiful  women  are  not  desired  nearlv 

• 

136 


Mature  Woman 

as  much  as  the  poets  would  have  us  suppose. 
Consider  the  fate  of  Irene  Lapham.  How 
ever,  most  delusions  respecting  women  are  dis 
seminated  by  the  poets. 

In  the  long  run,  a  woman  is  the  best  judge 
of  a  man.  A  man  never  finds  out  just  which 
woman  loved  him  until  he  is  so  weary  of  love! 
Clever  remarks  about  women  are  not  neces 
sarily  true.  Middle-aged  women  give  the  most 
joy  to  their  lovers.  That  seems  very  odd  and 
is  a  circumstance  worthy  of  our  very  closest 
scrutiny,  but  for  some  strange  reason  it  re 
mains  neglected.  It  is  the  theme  of  "Indian 
Summer."  Only  a  vulgar  man  ever  befools 
a  woman  in  love.  On  the  other  hand,  a  capac 
ity  for  love  is  rare,  like  a  capacity  for  states 
manship  or  poetry. 

Exercise  the  utmost  caution  before  revealing 
to  the  woman  you  love  anything  that  could  be 
interpreted  as  jealousy.  Never  rush  into  the 
opposite  mistake  of  praising  a  rival  unduly  or 
of  trying  to  conceal  your  jealousy  under  the 
guise  of  some  other  feeling  or  suggestion. 

137 


William  Dean  Howells 

When  you  have  failed  to  extract  from  a  woman 
an  assurance  that  she  loves  you,  do  not,  in  your 
pain,  say  something  that  may  hurt  or  bewilder 
her.  Few  statements  regarding  women  are 
more  absurd  than  the  assertion  that  "although 
man's  love  is  of  his  life  a  thing  apart,  'tis 
woman's  whole  existence."  The  love  a  man 
really  feels  is  his  whole  existence.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  woman's  love  can  be  of  her  life 
"a  thing  apart."  An  impression  to  the  con 
trary  is  due  to  the  genius  of  Byron  as  a  poet- 
he  having  made  the  absurd  statement  in  ques 
tion.  Byron  was  a  profligate.  What  he  said 
about  women  was  from  that  point  of  view 
accurate  enough.  He  knew  about  women 
exactly  what  a  profligate — a  charming,  fasci 
nating  profligate — would  naturally  know- 
nothing  more. 

A  woman  is  never  afraid  of  love,  whatever 
she  may  seem.  A  man  always  is.  The  con 
nection,  or  rather  the  relation,  between  the  love 
of  a  man  and  a  woman,  and  the  love  of  God  is 
subtle,  unexplored  and  of  more  importance, 

138 


Youth  and  Love 

perhaps,  than  the  mystery  of  the  ether  or  the 
electrical  nature  of  matter. 

The  general  effect  upon  me  of  the  tales  in 
which  Howells  exploits  the  Italian  scene  is  that 
a  woman  may  admire  you  immensely  without 
loving  you.  Young  men  seldom  realize  the 
importance  of  this  truth.  A  woman  is  quick 
to  distinguish  between  the  technique  of  a  man's 
love-making  and  the  feeling  that  prompts  it. 
This  explains  why  so  many  men  who  ought  to 
be  successful  in  love  fail  ingloriously  while 
men  less  gifted  who  feel  sincerely,  deeply, 
triumph. 

Love,  to  be  sure,  is  one  of  the  arts,  but  that 
fact  implies  all  the  more  sincerity  and  truth  in 
the  artist.  Women  realize  this  perfectly  and 
that  is  why  they  take  such  an  interest  in  art 
ists,  who  are  the  great  lovers.  Even  Nelson, 
hero  of  the  Nile,  was,  as  a  lover,  the  artist  pure 
and  simple,  as  was  Mark  Antony.  Those  who 
say  that  women  vary  forget  that  they  vary 
within  limits,  like  the  heavens  or  the  kaleido 
scope.  Women  do  not  vary  to  infinity. 

139 


William  Dean  Howells 

If  you  cannot  hold  a  woman  without  lying  to 
her,  let  her  go  at  once.  She  will  only  find  you 
out  in  the  end.  A  lie  told  to  a  woman  by  a 
man  is  proof  positive  of  his  incapacity  to  cope 
with  the  situation.  Even  a  noble,  beautiful 
lie  is  proof  of  weakness  here. 

I  think  young  Corey  learned  more  about  love 
than  any  other  Howells  young  man.  He 
learned  that  the  love  a  woman  gives  you  will  be 
sullied  by  every  deceit  you  make  her  practise, 
every  duplicity  of  which  you  are  guilty.  The 
world's  great  lovers  neither  lied  nor  intrigued, 
although  they  sinned.  When  you  are  con 
fronted  with  the  alternative  of  confessing  that 
you  love  a  woman  or  of  dissembling  the  fact  to 
the  world,  confess  the  truth.  The  conse 
quences  are  immediately  embarrassing,  but  in 
the  long  run  safest  because  they  include  a  mas 
tery  over  the  woman.  Where  the  heart  of  a 
woman  is  concerned  it  is  possible  to  snatch  vic 
tory  from  defeat  by  being  a  good  loser.  In 
love,  however,  only  a  rare  and  chosen  few 
among  men  are  good  losers.  Such  seems  to  be 

140 


Encouragement 

the  moral  of  all  that  Corey  went  through  as  a 
lover. 

The  young  men  who  figure  conspicuously  in 
Howells  as  the  suitors  of  his  heroines  and  as 
little  else — the  Lieutenant  Fentons,  the  Mr. 
Fords,  and  even  the  Lemuel  Barkers — learn 
before  they  are  through  that  the  more  you 
strive  to  reveal  your  good  points  to  a  woman 
the  more  you  insult  her  intelligence.  She  can 
find  out  your  merits  for  herself. 

A  woman  always  gives  a  man  the  degree  of 
encouragement  she  deems  necessary.  If  you 
see  a  woman  again  and  again  and  cannot  pluck 
up  your  courage  to  speak,  be  sure  the  trouble 
is  in  her  lack  of  appreciation,  her  lack  of  love. 
She  does  not  want  you  to  speak,  at  any  rate 
just  yet. 

A  man's  difficulty  with  a  woman  is  less  to 
win  her  love  than  to  manage  her  after  her  love 
is  won.  The  management  of  the  woman  who 
loves  you  is  a  tremendous  task  and  it  must  not 
be  undertaken  as  if  it  were  a  sort  of  game.  In 
general,  the  man  should  grow  on  the  woman, 

141 


William  Dean  Howells 

reveal  better  and  better  points,  like  strength, 
courage,  gentleness. 

No  matter  how  much  you  love  a  woman, 
there  will  be  moments  when  she  will  bore  you 
terribly  and  no  matter  how  much  she  loves  you 
there  will  be  times  when  she  will  want  to  horse 
whip  you.  Success  in  love  depends  upon  the 
negotiation  of  such  crises. 

Pay  no  attention  to  the  gossip  you  hear  re 
specting  the  faults  of  the  woman  you  love. 
Find  out  all  about  her  at  first  hand,  never  at 
second  hand.  The  knowledge  you  gain  about 
a  woman  from  others  is  less  valuable  than  the 
knowledge  you  derive  from  actual  contact. 

Don't  sit  down  in  front  of  a  woman  and 
worship  her.  Not  only  does  this  spoil  her,  but 
it  reflects  very  much  upon  your  intelligence  in 
her  eyes.  Don't  let  her  worship  you  because 
that  is  certain  to  spoil  you.  Nevertheless,  you 
must  be  very,  very  sweet.  Women  admire 
sweetness  in  a  man  beyond  measure,  but  it  must 
be  "sweetness"  in  the  French  sense. 

Suggesting  this,  that  and  the  other  to  the 
142 


Heart  Affairs 


woman  you  love  means  the  introduction  of  com 
plications  of  one  kind  and  another.  Most  of 
the  troubles  of  young  men  in  love  consists  in 
their  recklessness.  They  put  ideas  into  the 
woman's  head  that  could  never  have  occurred 
to  herself.  When  a  woman  loves  you  the 
fewer  ideas  you  give  her  the  better. 

This  by  no  means  exhausts  the  Howells 
philosophy  of  woman  in  love,  nor  is  it  an  ad 
equate  presentation  of  it.  Like  all  efforts  to 
set  down  in  one's  own  way  the  message  of  a 
master  it  fails  because  there  is  so  much  said. 
No  writer  of  any  age  repays  study  like  How- 
ells  when  one  longs  to  read  the  book  of  woman  ^ 
— not  Shakespeare  himself.  Howells  knew 
one  type  of  woman  extremely  well,  the  type 
to  which  the  Lapham  girls  and  the  Corey  girls 
belonged  in  spite  of  the  difference  in  their  so 
cial  position.  I  detect  no  cynicism  anywhere 
in  his  philosophy  unless  it  be  cynicism  to  ob 
serve,  for  instance,  that  it  is  always  a  serious 
matter  to  the  women  of  his  family  when  a 
young  man  gives  them  cause  to  suspect  that  he 

143 


William  Dean  Howells 

ris  interested  in  some  other  woman.  He  dwells 
upon  that  in  the  Lapham  annals.  A  son-in- 
law  or  brother-in-law,  Howells  explains,  does 
not  enter  the  family.  He  need  not  be  caressed 
or  made  anything  of.  The  son's  wife  has  a 
claim  upon  the  sisters  which  they  can  not  deny. 
Some  convention  of  the  feminine  sex  obliges 
women  to  show  affection  for  the  son's  wife,  to 
take  her  to  their  intimacy,  however  odious  she 
may  be  to  them. 

There  is  no  great  cynicism  in  that,  is  there  ? 


144 


XIII 

THE   HOWELLS   MASTERPIECE 

THE  most  effective  scene  in  fiction  to  me  oc 
curs  in  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham."  There 
is,  I  know,  a  tremendous  episode  in  "Ivanhoe," 
and  more  than  one  judicious  critic  has  pro 
nounced  it  the  supreme  thing.  Nor  can  the 
thrill  of  Robinson  Crusoe's  discovery  of  that 
footprint  in  the  sand  be  passed  by  in  any  com 
pilation  of  the  triumphs  of  narrative  art.  A 
certain  swimming  scene  in  Meredith  has  its 
champions,  and  they  can,  as  the  lawyers  say, 
make  out  a  case.  Anthony  Trollope  deserves 
very  honorable  mention  for  the  manner  in 
which  Mr.  Slope  is  set  turning  around  and 
around  during  one  infatuated  hour  in  the  pres 
ence  of  Bertie's  lame  sister.  What  scene  shall 
be  chosen  out  of  all  fiction  as  its  greatest  is  no 

145 


William  Dean  Howells 

question  to  answer  pontifically.  It  implies, 
too,  a  wider  knowledge  of  all  the  world's  novels 
than  most  of  us  gain  time  to  acquire. 

I  must  risk  all,  nevertheless,  upon  my  own 
judgment  and  make  what  terms  I  can  with  the 
champions  of  the  British  literary  superstition. 
The  most  thrilling  scene  in  fiction  reveals  Irene 
Lapham  in  the  bedroom  of  her  sister  Penelope. 
Irene  has  just  been  told  that  young  Corey 
never  loved  her.  There  had  been  a  terrible 
blunder  from  the  beginning.  Young  Corey 
loved  Penelope  only.  Rallying  at  once  from 
the  shock  of  the  disclosure,  Irene  went  with 
those  poor  trinkets  of  hers  to  Penelope.  One 
by  one  she  handed  them  over — the  pin  she  got 
that  very  day  because  it  was  so  like  the  one 
his  sister  wore,  a  newspaper  account  of  that 
ranch  he  visited  in  Texas,  the  buttonhole 
bouquet  he  left  beside  his  plate  and  which  she 
stole,  and  finally  the  pine  shaving  fantastically 
tied  up  with  a  knot  of  ribbon.  Irene's  sur 
render  of  these  trophies,  the  words  she  speaks 
to  poor  Penelope  and  the  circumstances  attend- 

146 


Meredith 


ing  her  mother's  participation  in  the  tragedy 
of  it  all  render  this  chapter  in  the  history  of 
the  Lapham  family  the  great  event  in  my  career 
of  adventure  among  the  world's  novels.  I 
have  panted  after  d'Artagnan,  too,  and  sat  in 
agony  at  the  head  of  old  Goriot's  bed. 

Not  that  this  exhausts  my  praise.  From 
the  standpoint  of  literature  regarded  as  a  fine 
art,  I  consider  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham" 
the  greatest  novel  ever  written.  In  structure, 
that  is  to  say  in  its  form  as  distinguished  from 
its  content,  it  surpasses  "The  Egoist"  of  Mer 
edith,  and  it  is,  of  course,  immeasurably  better 
written.  Of  the  pair,  Howells  is  the  best 
stylist.  In  the  matter  of  form,  structure, 
style,  whatever  we  choose  to  call  that  part  of 
the  novelist's  equipment  which  reveals  him  as 
an  artist,  this  tale  of  the  Laphams  is  more  fin 
ished  than  the  masterpieces  of  Flaubert.  If 
the  suggestion  were  not  so  misleading,  one 
might  liken  the  art  with  which  "The  Rise  of 
Silas  Lapham"  is  written  to  the  art  of  the  great 
French  novelists  generally,  or  to  the  art  dis- 

147, 


William  Dean  Howells 

played  in  the  tragic  drama  of  the  Greeks. 
There  is  something  of  the  ease  of  de  Maupas 
sant  or  of  Daudet  and  much  of  the  beauty  of 
Euripides  in  the  manner  of  Howells  through 
out  this  masterpiece  of  his. 

The  cunning  of  the  master  hand  is  manifest 
in  the  very  first  chapter.  We  must  know  all 
about  Silas  Lapham  from  the  start,  who  he  is, 
what  he  is,  his  temperament  and  his  financial 
and  family  affairs.  Balzac  is  deplorably 
heavy  in  his  masterpiece  itself  when  he  has  to 
cope  with  a  difficulty  of  this  sort.  Thackeray 
has  a  fashion  of  postponing  this  task  until  we 
get  beyond  his  opening  chapter.  Trollope  is 
frankly  heavy  and  British  as  he  fatigues  us  with 
detail  respecting  everybody's  private  affairs. 
In  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  we  are  af 
forded  all  the  light  essential  to  the  clarification 
of  his  mystery  by  that  expedient  of  Hartley 
Hubbard's  call  at  the  millionaire's  place  of 
business.  The  journalist  wants  material  for  a 
character  sketch.  The  skill  with  which  this  ex 
pedient  is  utilized  to  turn  Silas  Lapham  inside 

148 


Irene 


out  before  our  eyes  is  possible  in  a  master  of 
the  art  of  narrative  and  in  a  master  only. 

The  essential  quality  of  "The  Rise  of  Silas 
Lapham,"  however,  is  poetical.  "Romeo  and 
Juliet"  itself  is  not  more  deliciously  pervaded, 
saturated  with  love's  essence.  It  is  a  tale  of 
the  love  of  Irene  for  Tom  and  of  Tom  for  Pen 
elope,  every  development  of  the  plot  being 
critical  to  us  because  it  bears,  in  a  manner  near 
or  remote,  upon  that  intense  affair.  I  have 
been  unable  to  call  to  mind  a  novel  in  which  the  / 
sentiment,  indeed,  the  passion  of  love  has  been 
steeped  in  so  unsparing  a  realism  with  such  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  subject  matter. 
We  are  all  familiar  with  the  practice  of  the 
purveyors  of  the  excessively  romantic  in  the 
line  of  fiction.  They  insist  upon  talking  about 
a  thrilling  story  of  a  young  girl's  love.  Well, 
"The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  is  the  most  thril 
ling  story  of  a  young  girl's  love  since  that  af-  \ 
fair  between  a  certain  Capulet  and  a  certain 
Montague. 

The  ease  with  which  Howells  transfers  our 
149 


William  Dean  Howells 

sympathy  from  Irene  to  Penelope  is  uncanny. 
Theoretically,  she  wrings  our  withers.  She  is 
in  the  most  humiliating  of  all  the  dilemmas  im 
aginable  as  that  of  any  heroine.  Then,  too, 
she  is  beautiful,  distractingly  beautiful.  The 
realization  of  this  beauty  for  our  benefit  is  so 
adequate  that  Scott  himself  has  no  young  lady 
in  all  his  collection  who  conveys  so  vivid,  so 
ravishing  an  effect  of  feminine  loveliness  as 
Irene  Lapham.  Sweetness,  too,  is  hers  and  it 
neither  cloys  nor  is  insipid,  and  still  how  good 
she  is,  how  like  nothing  so  much  as  her  own 
perfect  and  imperishable  self! 

The  most  remarkable  feature  of  "The  Rise 
of  Silas  Lapham"  is  that  it  has  two  heroines. 
Irene  is  the  heroine  of  the  story  until  Corey 
has  disclosed  his  love.  Then  that  trying  part 
of  heroine  is  allotted  to  Penelope.  Nothing 
could  be  more  delicate  than  the  task  the  novelist 
has  undertaken  here  and  the  success  that  re 
wards  it  is  without  a  parallel  in  the  annals  of 
imaginative  literature.  Apart  from  the  quali 
ties  of  Howells  as  a  writer,  this  success  must 

150 


Mrs.  Corey 

be  ascribed  to  his  amazing  insight  into  the  heart 
of  woman.  In  this  detail  alone  his  superiority 
to  Meredith  has  not  won  any  recognition  only 
because  Howells  is  an  American.  He  brings 
Penelope  forward  and  he  draws  Irene  back 
with  a  subtlety  that  transfers  our  sympathy 
from  one  to  the  other  completely.  The 
tragedy  of  it  all  is  exposed  without  compunc 
tion,  especially  as  it  affects  the  mother  of  these 
girls.  The  words  of  the  mother  as  she  makes 
Irene  understand,  accompanied  by  that  harsh 
ness  of  manner,  acquire  a  poignancy,  a  control 
over  a  reader  of  which  only  the  masters  of  the 
written  word  possess  the  key. 

Howells  has  revealed  the  heart  of  woman 
with  all  his  cunning  throughout  this  work — 
Mrs.  Corey,  for  instance.  Her  dinner  to  the 
Laphams  serves  incidentally  to  reveal  the  su 
periority  of  the  humor  of  Howells  to  that  of 
Meredith.  In  the  American,  as  the  greater 
literary  artist,  we  have  a  more  intimate  rela 
tion  between  an  episode  like  that  Corey  dinner, 
for  instance,  and  the  structure  of  his  tale  as  a 

151 


William  Dean  Howells 

whole.  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  is  a 
model  of  structure.  It  is  such  easy  reading 
from  beginning  to  end.  The  humor,  mainly 
at  the  expense  of  the  Laphams,  is  eternal. 
Pericles  and  Aspasia  could  have  enjoyed  it  and 
Aristophanes  might  have  written  it.  There 
is  that  passage,  for  instance,  between  Penelope 
and  the  father  of  the  youth  she  was  to  marry. 
He  said  he  hoped  they  parted  friends  if  not 
quite  acquaintances.  Penelope  told  her  future 
father-in-law  that  she  hoped  they  would  be  able 
to  recognize  each  other  if  they  ever  met  again. 
In  its  revelation  of  American  family  life, 
this  Howells  masterpiece  is  a  permanent  his 
torical  document.  The  sweetness,  the  purity 
of  the  atmosphere  disclosed  and  the  simplicity 
of  all  the  characters  make  me  think  of  "The 
Vicar  of  Wakefield."  A  striking  point  of  re 
semblance  between  them  has  relation  to  the 
sense  of  humor.  It  is  universal,  Shakespear 
ean.  The  sense  of  humor  as  exploited  in  the 
tale  of  the  Lapham  family  is  not  "American" 
in  the  terribly  vulgar  implication  of  the  traves- 

152 


Wakefield 


tied  word.  The  American  sense  of  humor  is 
refined,  spiritualized,  at  the  opposite  pole  from 
the  heavy  British  idea  of  it.  Howells  and 
Goldsmith  are  alike  in  the  freshness,  the  spon 
taneity  of  their  humor.  I  think  the  American 
is  far  more  sophisticated.  The  two  tales  are 
typically  Anglo-Saxon  in  turning  upon  and 
about  the  snobbishness  of  the  race.  They  are 
alike  in  being  models  of  style.  I  think  the 
American  has  given  us  the  best  writing.  The 
poetical  quality  of  "The  Vicar  of  Wakefield" 
and  the  poetical  quality  of  "The  Rise  of  Silas 
Lapham"  indicate  an  element  in  common  be 
tween  the  genius  of  Howells  and  that  of  Gold 
smith.  Each  is  a  great  humorist  and  a  great 
stylist  and  versatile,  Tfut  there  is  a  gravity,  a 
ballast,  a  sophistication  in  the  American,  an 
intellectuality  not  discoverable  in  the  other. 
This  difference  suggests  as  anything  else  could 
not  the  significance  of  the  "realism"  with  which 
the  work  of  Howells  is  associated  in  some 
minds,  as  distinguished  from  the  "romanti 
cism"  which  underlies  the  type  of  fiction  so 

153 


William  Dean  Howells 

roundly  censured  in  some  of  the  Bostonian 
masterpieces  of  Howells. 

His  study  of  the  career  and  the  character  of 
Silas  Lapham  is  the  most  successful  treatment 
the  native  American  has  ever  received  in  fic 
tion.  If  we  are  to  deem  the  red  Indian  the 
native  American,  Cooper  has  a  monopoly  of 
the  glory  to  be  derived  from  his  revelation  in 
imaginative  aspects  according  to  modes  of  real 
ism.  I  have  thought  of  the  noble  Chingach- 
gook  while  following  with  the  closest  scrutiny 
the  vicissitudes  of  that  still  nobler  savage,  Silas 
Lapham. ;  He  is  a  true  native  American  of 
Anglo-Saxon  origin,  this  Silas,  reared  in  all 
the  terrible  "arrivism"  for  which  our  country 
has  come  to  stand.  Like  the  breed  to  which 
he  belongs,  Silas  Lapham  is  destitute  of  the 
combination  of  psychological  insight  with  im 
agination  and  fancy.  Incarnate  in  him  is  the 
unredeemed  ugliness  of  the  material  prosper 
ity  of  his  type  and  of  his  race.  He  is  the 
characteristic  product  of  a  people  without  gen 
ius.  The  emptiness,  the  f orlornness,  the  drear- 

154 


Silas 


iness  and  the  dullness  of  the  domestic  life  of 
the  "successful"  American  are  vividly  experi 
enced  for  us  vicariously  through  the  ordeals 
of  Silas  Lapham.  He  is  a  typical  American 
in  his  ignorance  of  human  nature,  of  beauty, 
of  ideas.  His  conception  of  life  takes  the 
form  of  an  enthusiasm  for  the  paint  he  sells. 
Everything  should  be  coated  with  that.  As 
far  as  he  can  be  said  to  have  a  theoiy  or  con 
ception  of  culture  at  all,  it  is  a  coat  of  paint. 

In  this  aspect  of  him,  Silas  Lapham  is  the 
most  American  thing  imaginable.  No  inspira 
tion  could  be  more  authentic  than  that  which 
decided  Howells  to  involve  his  greatest  char 
acter  in  paint.  Paint  symbolizes  the  Silas 
Lapham  attitude  to  life.  Silas  Lapham  in  his 
essence  is  the  realization  of  the  merit  of  the 
"coat  of  paint"  policy.  Put  a  coat  of  paint 
upon  despotism  and  the  effect  is  liberty.  Art 
is  a  coat  of  paint  upon  the  hideousness  of  Amer 
ican  life.  "I  believe  in  my  paint."  Silas 
Lapham  is  made  to  say.  "I  believe  it's  a  bless 
ing  to  the  world."  The  American  attitude; 

155. 


William  Dean  Howells 

exactly !  Lapham's  notion  that  a  pig  pen  cov 
ered  with  paint  must  be  all  right  is  natural 
enough.  Never  was  there  such  a  painted 
world  as  this  American  world.  Pig  pens  cer 
tainly  look  better  after  a  coat  of  paint  and 
there  wasn't  a  board  fence  nor  a  bridge  girder 
nor  the  face  of  a  cliff  nor  a  bold  prospect  in 
nature  without  Silas  Lapham's  advertisement 
in  huge  flaming  letters.  He  began  life  as  a 
bare  footed  boy,  too,  without  a  cent  to  his  name 
and  he  is  worth  a  million  dollars ! 

I  never  rise  from  a  perusal  of  "The  Rise  of 
Silas  Lapham,"  and  I  have  read  it  many  times, 
without  a  vivid  realization  of  the  inadequacy 
of  the  native  AmericanJhgaA  to  ideas.  How- 
ells  in  all  his  books  has  a  tendency  to  expose 
our  intellectual  poverty.  In  his  account  of 
Silas  Lapham  he  renders  very  obvious  the  in 
accessibility  of  the  native  American  to  what 
may  be  called  the  artistic  conduct  of  life.  As 
I  follow  the  agonies  of  Silas  Lapham  at  the 
dinner  table  of  the  Coreys  I  can  see  why  the 
beauty  of  our  republican  institutions  is  buried 

156 


Paint 


beneath  tne  growth  of  legal  technicalities,  hid 
den  by  coat  upon  coat  of  the  Lapham  paint. 
Our  institutions  are  too  beautiful  for  a  peo 
ple  to  whom  the  poetry  of  politics  is  meaning 
less.  In  any  reference  to  the  artistic  conduct 
of  life  at  the  Corey  table,  we  find  Lapham  star 
ing  from  one  to  another  of  the  guests,  blankly. 
The  attitude  he  affects  to  all  artists,  especially 
to  the  artist  who  built  that  house  for  him,  is 
the  most  American  thing  in  all  Howells.  I  as 
sociate  it  with  the  shock  received  by  Lemuel 
Barker  at  sight  of  that  nude  in  a  Boston  park. 
To  Lapham,  in  fact,  as  to  the  native  Americans 
one  encounters  in  the  world  of  Howells  gener 
ally,  there  is  something  meretricious  in  the 
whole  artistic  attitude  to  life.  Art  in  the 
native  American  mind  enjoys  the  dubious  im 
portance  attached  to  the  devil  in  the  medieval 
mind.  Art  may  be  very  well  in  its  way,  when 
subservient  to  the  police,  but  in  its  protest 
against  a  landscape  vivified  with  Lapham's; 
paint,  the  thing  is  an  obstacle  to  legitimate 
business. 

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William  Dean  Howells 

The  lesson  of  Silas  Lapham's  career,  then, 
is  that  the  native  Americans  of  Anglo-Saxon 
origin  are  the  last  survivors  of  the  barbarian 
world  of  which  the  ancient  Greeks  left  us  their 
profound  impressions.  As  I  think  I  said 
before,  the  Laphams  are  haunted  by  an  uneasy 
suspicion  of  what  they  really  are — a  tribe  of 
savages.  Silas  Lapham  spurns  the  sugges 
tion  with  fury  and  with  high  words.  He's  as 
good  as  anybody!  Silas  Lapham! 

All  native  Americans  of  Anglo-Saxon 
origin  are  like  Silas  Lapham.  They  know- 
how  to  deal  with  all  the  British  aristocrats  in 
the  peerage.  They  have  been  taught  how  to 
treat  a  waiter.  They  do  not  know  how  to 
deal  with  an  artist.  They  can  make  nothing 
of  the  artistic  attitude  to  life.  For  this  reason 
the  native  American  is  a  bigot,  intolerant,  dis 
posed  to  suspect  ideas.  The  fact  that  artists 
are  the  conspicuous  victims  of  native  Ameri 
can  bigotry — I  use  the  word  artist  in  its  true 
sense — is  the  reason  our  country  remains  a 
great  stronghold  of  barbarism,  despite  the 

158 


Chingachgook 

passing  of  Chingachgook.     Silas  Lapham  is 
all  over  the  place. 

The  Silas  Lapham  of  Howells  is  thus  to  be 
regarded  as  a  companion  portrait  to  the 
Chingachgook  of  Cooper.  They  are  the  two 
types  of  savages  our  country  has  produced. 
We  have  seen  the  last  of  the  Mohicans,  but 
the  native  Americans  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin 
are  still  with  us  and  the  contract  has  been 
given  the  place  as  well  as  the  importance  of 
the  tomahawk.  The  American  savage  has 
come  in  from  the  wilderness  to  the  board  of 
directors.  He  has  put  off  his  feathers  and  his 
paint  for  a  straw  hat  and  a  business  suit.  He 
has  lost  the  buffalo  and  the  forest  primeval  but 
he  has  got  hold  of  painting  and  the  arts. 
They  flourish  with  us  only  when  they  comply 
with  the  standards  of  Silas  Lapham.  They 
are  those  of  Chingachgook — for  in  all  things 
we  are  the  heirs  of  the  Mohicans,  the  land  of 
the  barbarian.  And  precisely  as  Silas  La 
pham  is  the  reincarnation  of  Chingachgook,  the 
dominant  American  is  a  contemporary  version 

159 


William  Dean  Howells 

of  Silas  Lapham,  a  noble  savage,  a  fine  bar 
barian,  with  not  a  trace  of  self-consciousness  to 
mar  the  simplicity  of  his  effect.  By  liberty, 
freedom,  art,  democracy  and  the  like,  the 
American  means  what  Chingachgook  meant 
by  such  things  after  they  had  passed  through 
the  crucible  of  Silas  Lapham's  mind.  Ching 
achgook  streaked  his  face  with  the  colors  he 
got  from  the  earth.  Lapham  sold  them. 
That  is  all.  The  Howells  masterpiece  depicts 
this  barbarism. 


160 


XIV 

THE  EEVOLTS   OF    HOWELLS 

NOTWITHSTANDING  the  brilliance  of  "The  Rise 
of  Silas  Lapham,"  there  are  critics  who  insist 
that  the  masterpiece  of  Howells  is  "A  Hazard 
of  New  Fortunes."  I  have  always  considered 
that  story  as  marking  the  period  of  revolt  in 
Howells.  He  is  essentially  a  rebellious  spirit, 
and  by  this  I  mean  that  in  his  heart  of  hearts, 
the  social  system  under  which  he  lives  is  not 
precious.  He  might  be  called  a  parlor  social 
ist  by  the  sarcastic  radical  youth  of  the  coun 
try.  The  famous  "Altruria"  sketches  belong 
to  this  mood.  When  Howells  abandoned 
Boston  and  took  up  editorial  and  literary  work 
in  New  York  he  permitted  the  mood  of  revolt 
to  assert  itself.  He  became  what  was  for  the 
time  a  furious  rebel  against  society.  He 
would  in  the  light  of  what  he  wrote  then  be 

161 


William  Dean  Howells 

deemed  a  socialist  of  the  conservative  type  to 
day. 

The  cause  of  the  revolt  of  Howells  is  plain 
in  every  chapter  of  the  great  tale  he  based 
upon  social  conditions  in  the  metropolis.  Lib 
erty  has  never  been  respectable.  The  Ameri 
can  people  comprise  the  most  respectable  na 
tion  that  has  ever  existed.  Howells  discovered 
to  his  chagrin  that  there  is  an  American  atti 
tude  of  condescension  to  liberty,  a  distrust  of 
it  based  upon  the  history  of  the  French  revo 
lution.  There  are  producible  instances,  in 
deed,  of  American  citizens  who  do  not  feel  to 
wards  liberty  the  uneasiness  of  the  lamb  at  the 
spectacle  of  a  swooping  eagle.  Such  Ameri 
cans  are  not  of  Anglo-Saxon  stock.  They 
are  not  Americans  in  the  historical  sense  and 
they  are  certainly  not  Americans  in  the  pa 
triotic  sense.  So  Howells  makes  his  plea  (in 
one  'of  his  great  novels)  for  the  foreigner. 
The  true  American  talks  of  liberty  regulated 
by  law.  He  shudders  at  law  regulated  by  lib 
erty.  He  has  been  reared  in  the  creed  that 

162 


Liberty 


liberty — the  liberty  for  which  the  Gracchi 
perished,  the  liberty  for  which  Madame  Ro 
land  went  to  the  guillotine — is  bad  for  a  man. 
The  true  American  loves  his  country  far  more 
than  he  loves  liberty,  but  he  loves  respectabil 
ity  far  more  than  he  loves  either.  It  is  the 
Anglo-Saxon  temperament. 

The  cleverness  with  which  Howells  can 
bring  this  out  in  a  novel  that  includes  among 
its  episodes  a  strike  on  the  grand  scale  shows 
him  without  illusion  on  the  subject  of  our  re 
spectable  social  system.  In  the  circumstance 
that  liberty  is  not  respectable,  we  have  by  no 
means  the  sole  basis  of  American  dislike  of  it. 
There  is  a  subtle  connection  between  liberty 
and  the  joy  of  life.  The  American,  in  the 
Anglo-Saxon  sense,  has  no  capacity  for  emo 
tional  or  aesthetic  expression  of  the  joy  of  life. 
His  gloom  of  soul  lurks  always  in  his  depress- 
ingly  conventional  cheer  of  manner.  The 
American  runs  from  joy  with  the  same  instinct 
that  makes  him  flee  liberty.  This  is  brought 
out  in  all  the  New  England  novels  of  Howells. 

163 


William  Dean  Howells 

Joy  with  us  is  the  monopoly  of  disreputable 
characters.  It  finds  expression  in  methods  in 
distinguishable  at  times  from  the  grossest  im 
morality.  That  brings  the  American  on  the 
scene  with  a  new  Anglo-Saxon  law.  Liberty 
is  limited  still  further.  For  liberty  is  to  the 
American  an  object  of  just  such  suspicion  as 
filled  the  mind  of  Octavia  with  reference  to 
Cleopatra.  Liberty  is  the  laughing  lady  of 
too  easy  virtue  whose  frenzies  are  really  or 
giastic  to  our  national  temperament. 

The  familiarity  of  Howells  with  the  Latin 
temperament  accounts  for  this  perception  of 
the  contrast  to  it  afforded  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
nature.  He  is  always  in  rebellion  against 
something  that  turns  out  to  be  Anglo-Saxon. 
He  is  like  Dickens  in  that.  But  Howells  has 
another  title  to  applause. 

He  had  the  courage  to  fly  in  the  face  of 
American  respectability  when  the  Chicago  an 
archists  were  executed.  I  love  Howells  for 
that,  because  nothing  so  respectable  as  Ameri 
can  government — I  speak  not  of  the  Tam- 

164 


Limited  Liberty 

manyized  cities — seems  ever  to  have  evolved 
unless  we  are  to  take  seriously  the  claims  put 
forth  for  ancient  Egypt.  One  can  pick  flaws 
in  the  United  States  government  and  Howells, 
who  has  served  it,  pokes  a  little  fun  at  it  or 
allows  his  characters  to  do  so  in  more  than  one 
novel.  There  may  be  lax  administration  at 
times  or  the  application  of  political  principle 
in  a  bad  sense  to  appointments  in  the  bureau 
cracy  or  a  certain  wild  extravagance  that  most 
of  us  ought  to  condemn  but  by  which  we  bene 
fit.  Granting  the  worst,  however,  the  re 
spectability  of  the  United  States  government 
remains  solid  and  that  is  what  Howells  seems 
to  be  referring  to  when  he  makes  a  heroine  like 
Helen  Harkness  discuss  democracy  with  a 
"lord."  The  Roman  Empire  under  Trajan 
cannot  compare  with  the  United  States  gov 
ernment  in  the  matter  of  respectability  and  I 
suppose  we  could  confront  the  Antonines 
themselves  with  our  Polk,  our  Fillmore  and 
our  Wilson. 

In  this  solid  respectability  one  finds  the  ex- 
165 


William  Dean  Howells 

planation  of  that  frigid  abstractness  which 
renders  the  United  States  government  so 
lunar.  It  stands  in  the  American  conscious 
ness  for  all  that  is  petrific,  remote,  aloof.  It 
seems  very  real  on  paper  and  it  grows  so  fan 
tastic  when  one  applies  the  test  of  personal 
contact.  A  youth  in  the  world  of  Howells  is 
surprised  to  learn  that  he  has  two  Senators. 
The  United  States  government  as  Howells 
deals  with  it  reminds  me  of  Shelley's  poetry 
because  it  sustains  so  little  relation  with  real 
ity.  I  think  this  is  the  extent  of  the  sympathy 
Howells  can  feel  with  the  position  of  the  rebel 
against  society.  He  does  not  complain  of  the 
United  States  government.  It  mystifies  him. 
All  things  human  are  alien  to  it.  What,  for 
example,  has  the  United  States  government 
ever  done  to  sweeten  manners?  The  very 
question  is  absurd.  It  reveals  a  hopeless  mis 
understanding  of  the  nature  of  American  in 
stitutions.  A  philosophy  of  this  kind  runs  all 
through  the  work  of  Howells  and  I  have  a 
fancy  that  his  sympathy  with  the  movement  to 


Unreal  Government 

prevent  the  execution  of  the  Chicago  anar 
chists  was  artistic  and  not  at  all  political. 
His  socialism  takes  on  an  artistry  of  the  same 
school  of  parlor  radicalism. 

The  great  revolt  of  Howells,  then,  is  from 
the  British  literary  superstition.  His  other 
revolts — even  in  "A  Hazard  of  New  For 
tunes" — are  temperamental.  He  did  not  dis 
cover  the  British  literary  superstition.  He 
was  not  the  first  to  preach  against  it.  He  is 
in  his  great  revolt  an  unconscious  follower  of 
Edgar  Allan  Poe.  There  is  a  something  like 
poetic  justice  to  me  in  the  fact  that  one  whom 
Howells  seems  so  to  despise  forestalled  him  in 
the  supreme  revolt.  It  can  not  be  said  that 
the  revolt — noticed  casually  in  one  of  Emer 
son's  journals — ever  led  to  serious  results. 
We  still  groan  beneath  the  weight  of  the  super 
stition.  Many  a  year  has  elapsed  since  Poe 
wrote: 

There  is  not  a  more  disgusting  spectacle  under  the  sun 
than  our  subserviency  to  British  criticism.  It  is  disgust 
ing,  first,  because  it  is  truckling,  servile,  pusillanimous  — 

167 


William  Dean  Howells 

secondly,  because  of  its  gross  irrationality.  We  know 
the  British  to  bear  .us  little  but  ill  will;  we  know  that  in 
no  case  do  they  utter  unbiassed  opinions  of  American 
books;  we  know  that  in  the  few  instances  in  which  our 
writers  have  been  treated  with  common  decency  in  Eng 
land,  these  writers  have  either  openly  paid  homage  to 
English  institutions,  or  have  had  lurking  at  the  bottom 
of  their  hearts  a  secret  principle  at  war  with  Democracy : 
we  know  all  this,  and  yet,  day  after  day,  submit  our  necks 
to  the  degrading  yoke  of  the  crudest  opinion  that  ema 
nates  from  the  fatherland.  Now  if  we  must  have  na 
tionality,  let  it  be  a  nationality  that  will  throw  off  this 
yoke. 

It  is  to  the  credit  of  Howells  that  he  has 
arrived  independently  at  a  conclusion  that  is 
on  all  fours  with  that  of  Poe.  Howells  has 
seen  as  no  other  American  has  seen  since  Poe 
that  the  literary  art  of  the  English  in  the  novel 
is  beneath  contempt.  So  much  he  was  willing 
to  say — in  his  own  fashion,  of  course — at  a 
time  when  the  avowal  required  courage. 

I  do  not  mean,  naturally,  that  Howells  ever 
pronounced  the  British  novel  itself  to  be  be 
neath  contempt.  In  fact,  he  has  given  the 
novel,  as  written  by  the  English,  great  praise, 

168 


Nationality 


while  noting  its  tendency  to  shade  off  into  the 
romance  or  rather  to  emerge  from  that,  or  to  be 
a  hybrid  of  the  two.  He  notes  with  decision 
that  the  English  in  the  novel,  properly  speak 
ing,  are  not  artists  although  they  may  be 
deemed  in  some  instances,  at  least,  masters  of 
the  business  of  telling  their  tales,  of  delineat 
ing  character,  of  creating  humorous  effects. 
Fiction  in  the  British  isles  remains  singularly 
backward,  speaking  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
aesthetic.  It  remains  where  chemistry  was  in 
the  eighteenth  century. 

Here  is  a  passage  in  which  he  exposes  his 
creed  as  a  novelist,  without,  perhaps,  realizing 
it.1 

Portsmouth  still  awaits  her  novelist;  he  will  find  a 
rich  field  when  he  comes ;  and  I  hope  he  will  come  of  the 
right  sex,  for  it  needs  some  minute  and  subtle  feminine 
skill,  like  that  of  Jane  Austen,  to  express  a  fit  sense  of  its 
life  in  the  past.  Of  its  life  in  the  present  I  know  noth 
ing.  I  could  only  go  by  those  delightful,  silent  houses, 
and  sigh  my  longing  soul  into  their  dim  interiors.  When 
now  and  then  a  young  shape  in  summer  silk,  or  a  group 

i  "Literature  and  Life"  Studies.  By  William  Dean  Howells. 
New  York:  Harper  &  Brothers. 

169 


William  Dean  Howells 

of  young  shapes  in  diaphanous  muslin,  fluttered  out  of 
them,  I  was  no  wiser;  and  doubtless  my  elderly  fancy 
would  have  been  unable  to  deal  with  what  went  on  in 
them.  Some  girl  of  those  flitting  through  the  warm, 
odorous  twilight  must  become  the  creative  historian  of 
the  place;  I  can  at  least  imagine  a  Jane  Austen  now 
growing  up  in  Portsmouth. 

This  is  blank  realism.  All  through  his 
criticism — this  is  very  significant — one  notes 
that  Howells  seems  inclined  to  exempt  Jane 
Austen  from  his  censure  of  the  art  of  British 
novelists  in  general.  Jane  Austen  wins  the 
approval  of  Howells  because  her  methods  are 
those  of  the  realism  he  professes. 

If  she  had  dealt  in  adventures  of  the  tremen 
dous  kind  Howells,  I  fear,  would  never  have 
praised  her  art.  The  business  of  the  novelist 
is  to  reflect  what  Howells  calls  life.  Now  the 
thing  that  goes  by  the  name  of  life  to  Howells 
is  but  a  superficial  aspect  of  it. 

Howells  seems  in  his  criticism  to  have  no 
suspicion  of  the  melancholy  fact  that  life  is 
preposterous,  melodramatic,  that  it  is  more  ro 
mantic  than  Ariosto's  "Orlando."  He  will 

170 


Jane  Ok'd 


allow  no  combination  of  psychological  insight 
with  imagination  and  fancy.  I  suspect  that 
his  reluctance  to  give  Shakespeare  his  due 
springs  from  a  dislike  of  the  ghost  in  "Ham 
let."  There  are  no  ghosts,  no  fairies.  How- 
ells  notes  further : 

If  Miss  Jewett  were  of  a  little  longer  breath  than  she 
has  yet  shown  herself  in  fiction,  I  might  say  the  Jane 
Austen  of  Portsmouth  was  already  with  us,  and  had 
merely  not  yet  begun  to  deal  with  its  precious  material. 
.  .  .  One  comfortable  matron,  in  a  cinnamon  silk,  was 
just  such  a  figure  as  that  in  the  Miss  Wilkins's  story 
where  the  bridegroom  fails  to  come  on  the  wedding-day; 
but,  as  I  say,  they  made  me  think  more  of  Miss  Jewett's 
people.  The  shore  folk  and  the  Down-Easters  are  spe 
cifically  hers;  and  these  were  just  such  as  might  have 
belonged  in  "  The  Country  of  the  Pointed  Firs,"  or  "  Sis 
ter  Wisby's  Courtship,"  or  "  Dulham  Ladies,"  or  "  An 
Autumn  Ramble,"  or  twenty  other  entrancing  tales. 

The  words  will  repay  study.  They  sum  up 
in  a  brief  paragraph  the  whole  Howells  gos 
pel.  They  are  like  the  little  piece  of  butter 
which  the  housekeeper  tastes  out  of  the  tub 
at  market  and  which,  to  the  discerning,  af 
fords  a  measure  of  the  quality  of  the  whole, 

171 


William  Dean  Howells 

Man  has  done  very  little  as  yet  but  scratch 
the  surface  of  life.  When  Howells  tells  us 
that  the  novel  should  reflect  life,  it  will  be 
found  that  his  context  amounts  to  a  definition 
of  life  in  terms  of  his  own  formula.  And  life, 
as  Leonard  Dalton  Abbott  so  often  reminds 
us,  is  too  large  for  our  formulas.  Howells 
does  not  seem  to  know  this.  He  is  a  striking 
example  of  the  great  artist  who  is  not  a  critic. 
For  example,  he  tells  us  in  a  pontifical^tone 
that  if  a  novel  flatters  the  passions  and  exalts 
them  above  the  principles  it  is  poisonous.  Poe 
tells  us  that  the  passions  should  be  held  in  rev 
erence. 

If  we  study  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  we 
find  passion  set  above  principle.  For  what  is 
the  first  and  greatest  commandment?  And 
what  is  the  commandment  that  is  like  unto  it? 
And  what  says  Paul  on  the  subject  of  the 
greatest  of  all  the  passions?  The  truth  is  that 
passion  is  divine  because  it  is  implanted  in  the 
bosom  of  man  by  his  maker.  Principle  is  the 
child  of  the  intellectual  pride  of  man. 

172 


No  Critic 


The  fact  that  passion  has  been  perverted  to 
base  uses  is  beside  the  point.  Principle  has 
been  abused,  misapplied,  misdirected.  To  the 
artist  there  are  not  many  passions. 

There  exists  to  the  artist  a  solitary  passion. 
Truth.  Beauty !  Give  it  what  name  you  will 
and  thrill  to  the  thing. 

Apart  from  the  great  thing  in  the  world  of 
creative  imagination,  we  find  Howells  inad 
equate  in  some  of  the  little  things.  Thus,  his 
criticism  of  one  of  the  conspicuous  character 
istics  of  Anthony  Trollope  in  the  novel  reveals 
a  positively  English  lack  of  insight.  Trollope, 
as  all  experienced  readers  of  good  novels  are 
well  aware,  establishes  himself  on  terms  of  un 
usual  familiarity  with  them.  A  direct  touch 
with  his  readers  is  the  consequence.  It  is  a 
most  unusual  thing  for  a  novelist  to  make  a 
personal  appeal  to  his  readers  on  behalf  of  his 
heroine.  Trollope  does  this  with  a  wonderful 
effect  in  "The  Warden,"  for  instance,  when 
his  Eleanor  Harding  gets  up  that  plan  to  meet 
John  Bold: 

173 


William  Dean  Howells 

Girls  below  twenty  and  old  ladies  above  sixty  will  do 
her  justice;  for  in  the  female  heart  the  soft  springs  of 
sweet  romance  reopen  after  many  years,  and  again  gush 
out  with  waters  pure  as  in  earlier  days,  and  greatly  re 
fresh  the  path  that  leads  downwards  to  the  grave.  But 
I  fear  that  the  majority  of  those  between  these  two  eras 
will  not  approve  of  Eleanor's  plan.  I  fear  that  un 
married  ladies  of  thirty-five  will  declare  that  there  can 
be  no  probability  of  so  absurd  a  project  being  carried 
through;  that  young  women  on  their  knees  before  their 
lovers  are  sure  to  get  kissed,  and  that  they  would  not  put 
themselves  in  such  a  position  did  they  not  expect  it;  that 
Eleanor  is  going  to  Bold,  only  because  circumstances  pre 
vent  Bold  from  coming  to  her;  that  she  is  certainly  a 
little  fool,  or  a  little  schemer,  but  that  in  all  probability 
she  is  thinking  a  good  deal  more  about  herself  than  her 
father. 

Dear  ladies,  you  are  right  as  to  your  appreciation  of 
the  circumstances,  but  very  wrong  as  to  Miss  Harding's 
character.  Miss  Harding  was  much  younger  than  you 
are,  and  could  not,  therefore,  know,  as  you  may  do,  to 
what  dangers  such  an  encounter  might  expose  her.  She 
may  get  kissed;  I  think  it  very  probable  that  she  will; 
but  I  give  my  solemn  word  and  positive  assurance,  that 
the  remotest  idea  of  such  a  catastrophe  never  occurred 
to  her,  as  she  made  the  great  resolve  now  alluded  to. 

This  is  altogether  charming.  Only  a  Phil 
istine  could  object  to  the  manner.  The  device 
is  essential  to  the  somewhat  sophisticated 

174 


Trollope  Again 

method  of  Trollope  in  his  studies  of  the  rela 
tions  of  men  and  women.  It  is  a  method  that 
destroys  no  illusion  because  Trollope  seeks  the 
creation  of  no  illusion  as  that  term  is  employed 
by  novelists  and  their  critics.  Since  Trollope 
is  a  searcher  of  hearts,  a  student  of  character, 
a  dealer,  if  the  thing  may  thus  be  stated,  in 
hearts  that  know,  it  follows  that  he  assumes  a 
kind  of  sophistication  in  his  reader. 

Only  a  mind  of  a  certain  maturity,  not  nec 
essarily  of  years  but  of  tone,  would  under 
stand  the  characteristic  novel  of  Trollope  at 
all.  Here  and  there  an  English  critic,  lacking 
all  insight,  tells  us  that  Trollope  comes  from 
behind  the  scenes  to  mingle  with  his  charac 
ters. 

Trollope  never  mingles  with  his  characters. 
He  talks  very  directly  to  his  readers  about 
those  characters.  He  has  a  perfect  right  to 
this  method.  It  is  a  convention  of  his  art. 
All  this  Howells  completely  overlooks  in  his 
denunciation  of  this  aspect  of  Trollope's  work. 
Trollope,  we  must  remember,  is  a  great  novel- 

175 


William  Dean  Howells 

ist  although  not  a  great  artist  as  well,  like 
Howells. 

Nevertheless,  in  one  of  his  masterpieces,  we 
have  Howells  actually  introducing  his  own 
name  in  his  own  capacity  as  a  novelist!  Mo- 
liere  set  him  the  example.  This  is  a  greater 
sin  to  me  than  all  the  offenses  of  Trollope  in 
"intruding"  upon  his  reader.  Trollope,  in 
"Barchester  Towers,"  makes  this  apology  for 
himself,  an  apology  and  a  confession  to  be 
pondered  by  all  students  of  the  art  of  fiction: 

How  often  does  the  novelist  feel,  aye,  and  the  his 
torian  also  and  the  biographer,  that  he  has  conceived 
within  his  mind  and  accurately  depicted  on  the  tablet  of 
his  brain  the  full  character  and  personage  of  a  man,  and 
that  nevertheless,  when  he  flies  to  pen  and  ink  to  perpetu 
ate  the  portrait,  his  words  forsake,  elude,  disappoint, 
and  play  the  deuce  with  him,  till  at  the  end  of  a  dozen 
pages  the  man  described  has  no  more  resemblance  to  the 
man  conceived  than  the  sign-board  at  the  corner  of  the 
street  has  to  the  Duke  of  Cambridge? 

And  yet  such  mechanical  descriptive  skill  would  hardly 
give  more  satisfaction  to  the  reader  than  the  skill  of  the 
photographer  does  to  the  anxious  mother  desirous  to 
possess  an  absolute  duplicate  of  her  beloved  child.  The 
likeness  is  indeed  true;  but  it  is  a  dull,  dead,  unfeeling, 

176 


Writing 


inauspicious  likeness.  The  face  is  indeed  there,  and 
those  looking  at  it  will  know  at  once  whose  image  it  is; 
but  the  owner  of  the  face  will  not  be  proud  of  the  re 
semblance. 

There  is  no  royal  road  to  learning;  no  short  cut  to  the 
acquirement  of  any  valuable  art.  Let  photographers  and 
daguerreotypers  do  what  they  will,  and  improve  as  they 
may  with  further  skill  on  that  which  skill  has  already 
done,  they  will  never  achieve  a  portrait  of  the  human 
face  divine.  Let  biographers,  novelists,  and  the  rest  of 
us  groan  as  we  may  under  the  burdens  which  we  so  often 
feel  too  heavy  for  our  shoulders,  we  must  either  bear 
them  up  like  men,  or  own  ourselves  too  weak  for  the  work 
we  have  undertaken.  There  is  no  way  of  writing  well 
and  also  of  writing  easily. 


177 


XV, 

THE   "SISSY"   SCHOOL  OF  LITERATURE 

THE  most  disconcerting  of  all  the  disconcert 
ing  aspects  of  Howells  as  a  critic  is  his  attitude 
to  those  Russians.  In  literature  the  Russians 
have  produced  no  artist  of  the  first  rank. 
Their  novelists  are  often  psychologists  of  ex 
traordinary  power.  I  suppose  Tolstoy  is  one 
of  the  greatest  writers  that  ever  lived.  But  a 
supreme  artist  in  the  novel? 

No! 

Turgenieff  is  an  artist.  Dostoievsky  is  in 
the  main  unreadable.  The  Russians  have 
done  well  in  the  short  story,  hetter  than  the 
English,  which  is  not  saying  much,  but  not  on 
the  whole,  I  think,  as  well  as  ourselves.  I  am 
speaking  of  Russian  literature  only  as  I  find 
it  in  translations.  In  throwing  the  weight  of 
his  influence  on  the  side  of  the  "supreme 

178 


Spain 


greatness"  theory  of  his  favorite  Russian  auth 
ors  Howells  has  but  added  to  the  numbers  of 
our  literary  superstitions. 

The  escapades  of  Howells  as  a  critic  of 
Spanish  fiction  have  proved  harmless.  He  has 
paraded  some  two  or  three  clever  writers  as  if 
they  were  as  great  as  himself.  Those  Span 
iards  of  his  are  on  a  level  with  the  weakest  of 
his  Russians. 

The  really  mischievous  work  of  Howells  as 
a  critic  of  literature,  however,  has  been  done 
to  the  literature  of  his  native  land.  Much  as 
I  respect  him  for  his  long  and  gallant  war 
upon  the  British  literary  superstition,  he  has 
fastened  upon  us  an  American  literary  super 
stition  that  is  almost  as  absurd.  In  an  eluci 
dation  of  this  point,  I  must  use  a  word  not 
often  employed  by  the  critic  of  literature. 

That  word  is  sissy. 

"Sissy,"  is  not  defined  in  the  average  dic 
tionary.  It  is  a  somewhat  slangy  term, 
handed  down  from  one  generation  of  school 
boys  to  the  next.  A  boy  who  was  called  a 

179 


William  Dean  Howells 

sissy  was  supposed  to  excel  in  feminine  traits 
rather  than  in  masculine  traits.  A  sissy,  as 
his  playmates  often  admit,  will  be  the  clever 
boy  of  his  class,  gifted.  Howells  is  at  the 
head  of  the  sissy  school  of  American  litera 
ture.  This  school,  for  commercial  reasons,  is 
the  dominant  one. 

Howells  is  the  head  of  the  school,  its  star,  its 
blazing  genius.  The  American  writers  who 
seem  the  objects  of  his  particular  enthusiasm 
are  old  maids,  or  wives  who  have  the  character 
istics  of  old  maids,  or  men  who  are  sissies. 
The  sissy  attitude  to  literature  is  reflected  in 
all  the  criticism  of  Howells.  It  is  implicit  in 
his  fiction,  but  there  it  lends  itself  completely 
to  his  artistic  effect.  That  effect  is  dependent 
upon  the  subtleties  of  the  feminine  mind,  the 
crises  in  the  feminine  heart.  What  particu 
larly  strikes  us  in  the  world  of  Howells  is  the 
subordination  of  all  that  is  masculine  to  all  that 

,  is  feminine.     Even  Silas  Lapham»is  subdued 
into  the  tone  of  his  wife  and  daughters,  who 

""make  the  supreme  decisions  in  everything. 

180 


The  Sisters 

This  saturation  of  the  Howells  atmosphere 
with  woman  explains  the  fact  that  all  the  point 
of  his  tale  escapes  at  times  the  masculine  mind. 
It  has  been  said  by  some  very  observing  per 
son  or  other  whose  name  I  do  not  know  that 
women  make  up  a  secret  society  to  which  the 
men  are  not  admitted.  Howells  seems  in  some 
way  or  other  to  have  gained  admittance  to  this 
secret  society.  The  most  inconspicuous  of 
woman's  tricks,  even  the  side-long  glance  she 
bestows  upon  her  attire  in  certain  critical  emer 
gencies,  is  well  known  to  him.  Only  a  novel 
ist  who  had  studied  the  behavior  of  women 
carefully  could  enter  into  details  like  these  re 
garding  the  Lapham  sisters.  I  quote  from 
"The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  in  The  Riverside 
Literature  Series,  of  the  Houghton  Mifflin 
Company : 

They  were  not  girls  who  embroidered  or  abandoned 
themselves  to  needle-work.  Irene  spent  her  abundant 
leisure  in  shopping  for  herself  and  her  mother,  of  whom 
both  daughters  made  a  kind  of  idol,  buying  her  caps  and 
laces  out  of  their  pin-money,  and  getting  her  dresses  far 
beyond  her  capacity  to  wear.  Irene  dressed  herself  very 

181 


William  Dean  Howells 

s.tylishly,  and  spent  hours  on  her  toilet  every  day.  Her 
sister  had  a  simpler  taste,  and,  if  she  had  done  altogether 
as  she  liked,  might  even  have  slighted  dress.  They  all 
three  took  long  naps  every  day,  and  sat  hours  together 
minutely  discussing  what  they  saw  out  of  the  window. 
In  her  self-guided  search  for  self-improvement,  the  elder 
sister  went  to  many  church  lectures  on  a  vast  variety  of 
secular  subjects,  and  usually  came  home  with  a  comic 
account  of  them,  and  that  made  more  matter  of  talk  for 
the  whole  family.  She  could  make  fun  of  nearly  every 
thing;  Irene  complained  that  she  scared  away  the  young 
men  whom  they  got  acquainted  with  at  the  dancing- 
school  sociables.  They  were,  perhaps,  not  the  wisest 
young  men. 

The  girls  had  learned  to  dance  at  Papanti's;  but  they 
had  not  belonged  to  the  private  classes.  They  did  not 
even  know  of  them,  and  a  great  gulf  divided  them  from 
those  who  did.  Their  father  did  not  like  company,  ex 
cept  such  as  came  informally  in  their  way;  and  their 
mother  had  remained  too  rustic  to  know  how  to  attract 
it  in  the  sophisticated  city  fashion.  None  of  them  had 
grasped  the  idea  of  European  travel;  but  they  had  gone 
about  to  mountain  and  sea-side  resorts,  the  mother  and 
the  two  girls,  where  they  witnessed  the  spectacle  which 
such  resorts  present  throughout  New  England,  of  multi 
tudes  of  girls,  lovely,  accomplished,  exquisitely  dressed, 
humbly  glad  of  the  presence  of  any  sort  of  young  man; 
but  the  Laphams  had  no  skill  or  courage  to  make  them 
selves  noticed,  far  less  courted  by  the  solitary  invalid, 
or  clergyman,  or  artist.  They  lurked  helplessly  about  in 

182 


Feminization 

the  hotel  parlors,  looking  on  and  not  knowing  how  to  put 
themselves  forward. 

Indeed,  were  it  not  for  this  intimacy  with 
the  soul  and  the  circumstance  of  women,  How- 
ells  could  not  have  written  his  masterpieces. 
The  American  world  is  the  feminized  world 
and  the  reign  of  Howells  is  the  expression  of 
that  fact  in  our  literature.  Woman  regards 
man  as  an  instrument  in  her  own  hands. 
Whatever  he  does  that  is  noble  or  great,  she 
inspired.  Howells  is  inclined  to  jest  at  this 
feminine  egoism.  Nevertheless,  he  has  done 
more  to  promote  it  than  any  other  American 
writer  who  has  worked  since  the  civil  war. 

There  is  little  evidence  in  the  works  of  How 
ells  that  he  realizes  the  masculine  attitude  to 
life  at  all.  This  by  no  means  implies  a  dis 
paragement  of  his  genius.  It  illustrates  the 
well  known  fact  that  nothing  is  more  surpris 
ing  than  the  limitations  of  men  of  genius. 
Consider,  for  instance,  the  incapacity  of 
Shakespeare  to  reflect  anything  but  a  hostile 
attitude  to  democracy,  or  the  failure  of  Shelley 

183 


William  Dean  Howells 

to  discern  the  spirituality  of  Jesus,  or  the  lack 
of  intuition  in  Dickens  as  he  explores  the  heart 
of  woman. 

The  inadequacy  of  Howells  to  the  male  fac 
tor  in  human  experience  is  only  additional  evi 
dence  that  the  limitations  of  men  of  genius  are 

« 

no  less  surprising  than  their  gifts.  Unless  we 
perceive  clearly  the  reasons  which  have  raised 
Howells  to  sovereignty  over  the  sissy  school  of 
literature,  the  dominant  American  one,  we 
shall  miss  the  point  of  his  distinction  between 
the  romanticist  and  the  realist.  His  whole 
career  is  founded  upon  the  novel  as  he  under 
stands  it  in  a  sense  differentiated  from  the  ro 
mance  and  from  the  "romanticistic." 

As  Howells  proceeds  to  explain  himself  in 
his  critical  work,  we  observe  that  the  realism  he 
champions  amounts  to  nothing  more  than  a 
feminine  attitude  to  life  on  the  part  of  the 
novelist,  an  attitude  of  receptivity,  of  passiv 
ity,  the  woman  attitude.  This  is  by  no  means 
a  wrong  attitude  but  it  is  feminine.  The  nov 
elist  whose  genius  happens  to  be  masculine  will 

184 


Nothing  Manly 

never  submit  to  the  trammels  of  such  a  female 
conception  of  his  function.  He  will  inevitably 
stamp  himself  upon  the  wax  of  life  in  patterns 
of  his  own  temperament,  his  own  soul,  his  own 
conception  of  the  thing  called  human  experi 
ence.  He  will  not  be  content  with  observation 
of  life  and  the  faithful  reflection  of  what  he 
sees. 

When  a  masculine  genius  in  fiction  has  dealt 
with  life  it  is  in  some  degree  made  over.  When 
the  feminine  genius  is  done  with  his  work,  life 
may  be  better  reflected,  but  it  remains  exactly 
what  it  was. 

The  Howells  war  on  romanticism  works  out, 
then,  into  a  protest  against  the  masculine  in 
literature.  The  praises  of  Howells  are  re 
served  for  Jane  Austen,  the  essentially  fem 
inine  novelist,  whom  he  places  above  George 
Eliot,  who  manifests  a  masculine  genius,  above 
Charlotte  Bronte,  who  could  write  a  man's 
tale,  and  above  Dickens,  most  masculine  of 
novelists.  In  American  literature,  the  praises 
of  Howells  are  all  for  the  ladies  and  for  those 

185 


William  Dean  Howells 

who  write  like  ladies.  To  those  who  have  no 
realization  of  Woman,  the  tales  of  Howells 
seem  often  trivial  but  he  is  trivial  only  as  a 
critic.  I  had  almost  said  he  is  no  critic.  But 
he  is  a  real  critic  now  and  then. 

It  is  important  to  distinguish  at  all  times 
between  a  real  critic  and  a  sham  critic — the 
critic  who  may  be  an  unconscious  humbug  as 
well  as  a  conscious  one.  No  man  becomes  an 
expert  on  the  subject  of  literature  from  the 
mere  fact  of  having  read  many  books.  A  man 
may  have  read  but  few  books,  yet  if  he  bring 
to  those  few  the  right  qualities,  and  if  he  study 
those  few  much,  he  is  an  expert  in  literature  of 
a  kind.  An  expert  in  literature  is  not  neces 
sarily  a  critic. 

Experts  in  literature  are  exempt  from  the 
rule  denying  a  man  the  title  of  critic  if  he  have 
done  no  important  creative  work  of  his  own. 
Thus  a  man  may  be  an  expert  on  the  subject 
of  Shakespeare,  making  brilliant  conjectural 
emendations  of  the  text,  and  yet  be  incapable 

186 


The  "Doc" 

of  Shakespearean  criticism  in  the  true  sense. 
Such  a  man  is  Doctor  Dryasdust. 

Doctor  Dryasdust  is  invariably  a  conscien 
tious  expert  in  the  department  of  literature  to 
which  he  happens  to  consecrate  himself.  He 
usually  gives  himself  out  as  a  critic.  He  is 
taken  quite  seriously  in  that  capacity  through 
out  the  Anglo-Saxon  world,  which  is  the  para 
dise  of  Doctor  Dryasdust. 

A  simple  rule  enables  the  uninitiated  to  dis 
tinguish  the  few  who  are  critics  from  the  many 
who  are  Doctor  Dryasdusts.  That  pompous 
man  holding  a  chair  of  literature  at  the  uni 
versity,  writing  heavy  introductions  to  light 
authors  and  read  widely  is  Doctor  Dryasdust. 
That  shabby  man  whose  idea  of  a  novel  or  a 
poem  thrilled  you  and  of  whom  Doctor  Dryas 
dust,  when  you  asked  him,  remarked  with  a 
burst  of  laughter:  "Oh,  nobody  takes  him 
seriously!" — that  shabby  man  is  a  critic. 

Let  us  look  more  closely  into  this  subject 
of  the  critic,  of  criticism.  Wordsworth  in  his 

187 


William  Dean  Howells 

old  age  advised  Robert  Montgomery  not  to 
be  anxious  about  any  individual's  opinions  con 
cerning  his  writings,  however  highly  he  might 
think  of  his  genius  or  rate  his  judgment. 

Be  a  severe  critic  to  yourself,  said  Words 
worth,  and  depend  upon  it  no  person's  decision 
upon  the  merit  of  your  works  will  bear  com 
parison,  in  point  of  value,  with  your  own. 
Above  all,  said  Wordsworth  to  his  young 
friend,  he  must  remind  him  that  no  man  takes 
the  trouble  of  surveying  and  pondering  an 
other's  writings  with  a  hundredth  part  of  the 
care  which  an  author  of  sense  and  genius  will 
have  bestowed  upon  his  own. 

Many  a  year  has  come  and  gone  since 
Wordsworth  said  these  things,  and  I  do  not 
see  that  time  has  given  them  the  lie.  No 
criticism  of  any  kind  is  published  anywhere  in 
the  Anglo-Saxon  world  that  is  of  much  use  to 
a  writer,  although  it  is  often  of  great  interest 
and  importance  to  a  reader.  Things  are  not 
quite  so  bad  among  the  French,  to  whom  the 
writing  of  prose  is  one  of  the  arts,  to  whom  it 

188 


True  Criticism 

is  possible  to  draw  a  distinction  between  the 
thing  a  writer  says  and  his  manner  of  saying 
it. 

This  a  vital  point. 

What  a  writer  says  is  one  thing. 

The  way  in  which  he  says  it  is  quite  another. 

The  moment  this  distinction  is  apprehended, 
a  great  step  forward  has  been  taken  in  the 
field  of  literary  criticism.  Most  people  think 
they  can  take  this  forward  leap.  The  matter 
is  far  from  being  as  simple  as  all  that.  Many 
men,  and  still  more  women,  who  make  great 
claims  for  themselves  as  critics,  can  not  take 
this  step  at  all.  Submit  to  their  judgment  any 
specimen  of  prose  or  verse  in  manuscript,  of 
which  they  do  not  know  the  authorship,  and 
the  verdict  will  be  based  upon  all  sorts  of  ir 
relevant  considerations.  Bottom,  the  weaver, 
can  see  no  beauty  in  any  sonnet  that  discredits 
the  practice  of  roaring.  Perfect  as  may  be 
the  poet's  mastery  of  the  form,  beautiful  as 
may  be  the  metaphor  that  brings  the  idea  home 
to  us,  exquisite  as  may  be  the  negotiation  of 

189 


William  Dean  Howells 

the  difficulty  between  octave  and  sextette, 
glorious  as  may  be  the  climax  of  the  last  line, 
Bottom,  the  weaver,  will  insist  in  good  faith 
that  no  sonnet  in  disparagement  of  roaring 
can  possibly  be  great.  It  is  but  placing  one 
self  more  hopelessly  in  the  power  of  Bottom  to 
point  out  to  him  that  his  attitude  to  the  sonnet 
as  literature  merely  reflects  his  view  of  the 
roar  as  a  universal  standard.  He  will  retort 
that  the  world  is  but  a  place  to  roar  in,  that 
the  arts  are  languages,  and  all  those  languages 
are  nothing  but  roaring. 

In  the  same  way  and  for  the  same  reason,  it 
is  fatuous  to  submit  to  a  true  Methodist  a  tale 
that  suggests  a  doubt,  however  prettily,  re 
garding  the  goodness  of  God,  because  a  true 
Methodist  is  convinced  that  in  these  days  of 
quadrennial  conferences  no  doubt  can  be 
thrown  on  the  goodness  of  God  prettily.  Nor 
would  it  be  obvious  to  a  Christen  Scientist 
that  any  great  literature  can  grow  around  the 
amours  of  Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy.  No  true 
Catholic  detects  literary  values  in  the  epic 

190 


A  Rare  Gift 

which  does  not,  in  any  reference  to  the  Virgin 
Mary,  accept  her  immaculate  conception. 

I  have  lingered  over  this  detail  in  order  to 
clarify  the  supreme  mystery  connected  with 
any  application  of  the  critical  faculty  to  litera 
ture.  He  only  is  a  critic  who  can  divest  his 
mind  of  every  consideration  irrelevant  to  a  test 
of  literature.  Is  it  literature?  That  is  the 
question  confronting  a  critic  when,  in  the  dis 
charge  of  his  function,  he  studies  anything  in 
the  form  of  prose  or  verse.  The  answer  to 
this  question  has  nothing  to  do  with  any  doubt 
that  may  be  cast  by  a  writer  upon  such  themes 
as  the  goodness  of  God  or  the  fallacy  of  roar 
ing.  The  mere  fact  that  a  man  is  in  the  habit 
of  judging  prose  or  verse  from  the  standpoint 
of  such  irrelevancies  will  in  time  disqualify 
him  as  a  critic  of  literature. 

In  this  simple  fact  we  are  afforded  a  suffi 
cient  explanation  of  a  circumstance  that  mysti 
fies  the  young  and  inexperienced  writer.  I 
refer  to  the  incapacity  of  the  editor  of  almost 
any  great  periodical  in  the  land  to  pass  judg- 

191 


William  Dean  Howells 

ment  upon  any  prose  or  verse  submitted  to  him 
—I  mean  from  the  standpoint  of  literature. 
The  editor  will  tell  you  quickly  enough  and 
with  an  unerring  judgment  whether  or  not  a 
bit  of  prose  fits  into  his  editorial  scheme.  This 
inveterate  habit  of  judging  all  prose  and  all 
verse  in  the  light  of  his  formula  ultimately  de 
stroys  an  editor's  capacity  to  judge  either 
prose  or  verse  as  literature.  The  necessities 
of  his  position  compel  him  to  subordinate  the 
literature  to  the  formula.  Howells  as  an  edi 
tor  was  the  worst  offender. 

Even  when  an  editor — it  sometimes  happens 
— decides  to  make  room  for  literature,  it  is  not 
so  easy  to  find  a  critic.  It  seems  the  easiest 
thing  in  the  world  to  be  a  critic  of  literature — 
just  as  it  seems  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world 
to  be  a  democrat  or  to  reveal  a  sense  of  humor. 
There  is  a  theory  that  the  critic  is  a  person  who 
has  failed  in  literature.  In  view  of  the  num 
bers  of  persons  who  are  understood  to  have 
failed  in  literature,  it  seems  odd  that  the  critic 
remains  so  rare  a  bird.  I  am  personally 

192 


Failure 


acquainted  with  persons  who,  having  failed  as 
critics,  have  succeeded  in  literature.  He  who 
has  never  scoured  New  York  for  a  critic  only 
to  return  with  a  college  graduate,  will  never 
understand  why  periodicals  are  edited  accord 
ing  to  formulas.  A  formula  saves  an  editor 
from  any  need  to  reveal  his  ignorance  regard 
ing  the  true  answer  to  many  riddles.  What  is 
style?  How  does  a  poet  reveal  genius  in  his 
work  as  distinguished  from  mere  talent? 
What  is  an  original  idea,  and  is  its  value,  in 
literature,  equal  to  that  of  the  hackneyed 
theme  touched  by  a  master?  Dialogue  again! 
And  fidelity  to  nature,  and  knowledge  of  the 
human  heart — who  is  competent  to  decide  that 
a  writer  has  or  has  not  these  things  ?  Any  col 
lege  graduate  can  sit  at  a  desk  and  run  a 
periodical  according  to  a  formula  beautifully. 
To  get  rid  of  the  formula,  to  inspire  men  to 
write  out  their  highest  and  holiest,  to  give  them 
the  precious  sense  of  being  understood,  to  be 
able  to  make  allowance  for  the  weaknesses  as 
well  as  the  sublimities  of  the  literary  temper- 

193 


William  Dean  Howells 

arnent,  to  do  these  things  with  such  effect  that 
a  periodical  will  be  literary  and  American  and 
profitable — I  have  met  college  graduates  who 
could  not  do  these  things.  I  fear  that  as  an 
editor  Howells  neglected  these  things.  He 
says  he  essayed  these  things. 

Literature,  then,  is  purely  incidental  to  the 
editorial  policy  of  our  periodicals.  It  is  not, 
as  a  rule,  believed  in.  It  is  judged,  not  from 
its  own  standpoint,  but  with  reference  to 
factors  that  are  not  literary  at  all.  And  tak 
ing  our  great  periodicals  together,  I  am  sure 
that  during  the  long  period  since  our  Civil 
War  they  have,  on  the  whole,  done  more  for 
British  authors  than  they  have  done  for  Ameri 
can  authors. 

To  this  rule  of  subservience  to  the  British 
literary  superstition,  William  Dean  Howells 
is  the  honorable  exception.  He  has  created 
the  "sissy"  school — native  American  and 
Anglo-Saxon  to  the  backbone.  It  is  the 
school,  if  one  may  say  so,  of  insipidity.  It 

194 


Sophistication 

tests  everything  in  the  light  of  its  formula. 
Note  how  cleverly  Howells  evades  the  point — 
unconsciously,  perhaps — in  this  remark  which 
I  extract  from  the  volume  called  "Literature 
and  Life."  The  sophisticated  editor  is  giving 
advice  to  the  young  contributor: 

Unless  you  are  sensible  of  some  strong  frame  within 
your  work,  something  vertebral,  it  is  best  to  renounce  it, 
and  attempt  something  else  in  which  you  can  feel  it.  If 
you  are  secure  of  the  frame  you  must  observe  the  quality 
and  character  of  everything  you  build  about  it;  you  must 
touch,  you  must  almost  taste,  you  must  certainly  test, 
every  material  you  employ;  every  bit  of  decoration  must 
undergo  the  same  scrutiny  as  the  structure. 

It  will  be  some  vague  perception  of  the  want  of  this 
vigilance  in  the  young  contributor's  work  which  causes 
the  editor  to  return  it  to  him  for  revision,  with  those 
suggestions  which  he  will  do  well  to  make  the  most  of; 
for  when  the  editor  once  finds  a  contributor  he  can  trust, 
he  rejoices  in  him  with  a  fondness  which  the  contributor 
will  never  perhaps  understand. 

It  will  not  do  to  write  for  the  editor  alone;  the  wise 
editor  understands  this,  and  averts  his  countenance  from 
the  contributor  who  writes  at  him;  but  if  he  feels  that 
the  contributor  conceives  the  situation,  and  will  conform 
to  the  conditions  which  his  periodical  has  invented  for 

195 


William  Dean  Howells 

itself,  and  will  transgress  none  of  its  unwritten  laws;  if 
he  perceives  that  he  has  put  artistic  conscience  in  every 
general  and  detail,  and  though  he  has  not  done  the  best, 
has  done  the  best  that  he  can  do,  he  will  begin  to  liberate 
him  from  every  trammel  except  those  he  must  wear  him 
self,  and  will  be  only  too  glad  to  leave  him  free.  He 
understands,  if  he  is  at  all  fit  for  his  place,  that  a  writer 
can*  do  well  only  what  he  likes  to  do,  and  his  wish  is  to 
leave  him  to  himself  as  soon  as  possible. 

That  is  to  say,  the  young  contributor  must 
stick  to  the  formula  of  the  sissy  school.  Every 
time  Howells  praises  a  writer,  he  turns  out  to 
be  a  member  of  the  sissy  school.  For  instance, 
in  the  volume  from  which  I  have  just  quoted, 
we  have  the  author  of  "The  Rise  of  Silas 
Lapham"  saying: 

I  do  not  believe  that  in  my  editorial  service  on  the 
Atlantic  Monthly,  which  lasted  fifteen  years  in  all,  I  for 
got  the  name  or  the  characteristic  quality,  or  even  the 
handwriting,  of  a  contributor  who  had  pleased  me,  and 
I  forgot  thousands  who  did  not.  I  never  lost  faith  in  a 
contributor  who  had  done  a  good  thing;  to  the  end  I  ex 
pected  another  good  thing  from  him.  I  think  I  was  al 
ways  at  least  as  patient  with  him  as  he  was  with  me, 
though  he  may  not  have  known  it. 

At  the  time  I  was  connected  with  that  periodical  it 

196 


Editor 


had  almost  a  monopoly  of  the  work  of  Longfellow,  Emer 
son,  Holmes,  Lowell,  Whittier,  Mrs.  Stowe,  Parkman, 
Higginson,  Aldrich,  Stedman,  and  many  others  not  so 
well  known,  but  still  well  known.  These  distinguished 
writers  were  frequent  contributors,  and  they  could  be 
counted  upon  to  respond  to  almost  any  appeal  of  the 
magazine;  yet  the  constant  effort  of  the  editors  was 
to  discover  new  talent,  and  their  wish  was  to  wel 
come  it. 

In  other  words,  the  constant  effort  of  How- 
ells  was  to  get  hold  of  more  sissies,  lest  the 
great  school  should  perish.  It  has  not  per 
ished.  That  is  the  scourge  of  our  literature 
to-day.  Our  successful  writers  are  all  young 
ladies — some  of  them  in  trousers,  and  some  of 
them  very,  very  mature. 

Few  surprises  are  more  overwhelming  to 
young  ladies  who  think — there  are  some — 
than  that  occasioned  by  the  grossness,  the 
coarseness,  the  vulgarity,  the  brutality  of  the 
real  writer.  Indeed,  many  young  ladies 
belonging  to  our  best  families  have  no  suspi 
cion  that  the  sleek,  well  groomed  men  infesting 
the  editorial  departments  of  New  York  period- 

197 


William  Dean  Howells 

icals,  talking  glibly  of  style,  picking  flaws  in 
hexameters  and  affecting  a  British  accent  are 
not  in  the  least  "literary." 

Literature  can,  no  doubt,  be  cultivated  in 
palaces,  under  domes,  amid  pomps,  but  it 
cannot  be  created  there.  Great  literature  is 
the  creation,  for  the  most  part,  of  disreputable 
characters,  many  of  whom  looked  rather  seedy, 
some  of  whom  were  drunken  blackguards,  a 
few  of  whom  were  swindlers  or  perpetual  bor 
rowers,  rowdies,  gamblers  or  slaves  to  a  drug. 
We  may  rest  assured  that  the  haughty  editor 
of  the  great  New  York  periodical,  swaggering 
across  Fifth  Avenue  for  his  cocktail  and  cold 
turkey,  would  never  condescend  to  nod  to  such 
a  shabby  object  as  wrote  "The  Raven." 

The  result  of  this  state  of  affairs  is  the 
renascence  of  insipidity  in  Anglo-Saxon  liter 
ature.  There  has  been  nothing  like  it  since 
the  age  of  Pope.  The  fault  now  is  in  kind 
what  it  was  then.  Literature  has  too  many 
friends  at  court.  Literature  has  too  many  silk 
breeches.  There  are  too  many  fine  gentlemen 

198 


Pope 


in    literature.     Too    many    universities    are 
devoted  to  it. 

It  is  the  consequence  of  the  triumph  of  that 
sissy  school  of  which  Howells  is  the  prophet. 


199 


XVI 

THE   LIMITATIONS   OF   HOWELLS 

THE  most  obvious  characteristic  of  the  work  of 
Howells,  beginning  with  the  book  which  seems 
to  have  established  his  fame,  "Their  Wedding 
Journey,"  to  that  study  of  religious  expe 
rience  called  "The  Leatherwood  God,"  is  its 
relation  to  the  surface  of  life  and  to  that  sur 
face  only.  His  novels,  his  novelettes,  his 
experiments  with  the  short  story,  his  farces, 
his  criticisms  never  take  us  to  the  depths  of 
anything.  There  are,  he  seems  to  say  again 
and  again,  no  depths.  Life  is  a  surface.  It 
is  to  be  examined  with  minutest  care,  made  the 
subject  of  a  series  of  such  careful  studies  as 
have  proceeded  from  his  pen,  and  of  which 
"The  Quality  of  Mercy,"  if  not  the  most  suc 
cessful  from  a  reader's  standpoint,  is  at  any 
rate  a  wonderful  instance  of  the  method. 

200 


Her  Soul 


Even  when  dealing  with  the  supernatural,  as 
in  "The  Undiscovered  Country,"  or  "The 
Leatherwood  God,"  Howells  never  plunges 
into  depths.  He  is  like  those  older  psychol 
ogists  who  kept  so  carefully  within  the  limits 
of  consciousness  that  they  never  suspected  the 
existence  of  the  sub-conscious.  The  matter 
might  be  put  in  a  different  fashion  by  noting 
that  the  genius  of  Howells  is  objective  and  not 
in  the  least  subjective.  He  can  tell  us  with 
subtle  observation  what  Grace  Breen  said 
when  she  confessed  her  love,  how  she  looked, 
the  way  she  raised  her  arms  and  what  she  wore. 
He  never  dares  to  say  what  went  on  within 
her  soul.  How  could  he  ever  know  the  sub 
conscious?  In  avoiding  all  that  he  avoids 
likewise  the  symptoms  or  the  depths  of  pas 
sion,  its  essence,  as  the  poets  might  say. 

There  are  critics  who  deny  that  any  novelist 
can  tell  what  transpires  within  the  soul  of  his 
heroine.  That  is  not  the  teaching  of  psycho 
logy.  Indeed,  nothing  is  so  remarkable  as  the 
discredit  attaching  to  the  whole  realistic  theory 

201 


William  Dean  Howells 

of  fiction  exemplified  in  the  work  of  Howells 
and  his  disciples  in  consequence  of  the  re 
velations  of  psychoanalysis.  The  Freudian 
theory  of  the  neuroses  vindicates  the  practice 
of  the  older  novelists  who  explained  even  the 
dreams  of  their  heroines.  Shakespeare,  the 
greatest  of  all  creators  of  heroines,  of  all 
students  of  the  passions,  is  at  the  same  time  in 
his  exploration  of  the  human,  the  antithesis  to 
Howells  and  to  the  American  school  of  realism. 
The  great  literary  artist  is  he  who  plunges 
boldly  into  the  subconsciousness  of  his  heroine 
after  the  manner  of  Freud  with  the  typical 
dream  of  the  so-called  "(Edipus  complex." 
To  tell  the  truth,  it  is  impossible  to  read  the 
literature  of  the  psychoanalytic  school  of 
Freudian  psychology  without  marvelling  at 
the  completeness  with  which  the  whole  fabric 
of  the  Howells  criticism  collapses  and  disinte 
grates.  It  is  all  surface  and  no  depth. 

Howells,  then,  has  done  an  enormous 
amount  of  damage  to  American  literature. 
He  was  enabled  to  do  all  the  mischief  through 

202 


A  Lack 


the  medium  of  his  own  amazing  genius  in 
technique,  his  own  perfect  humor,  his  mastery 
of  dialogue,  his  ability  to  reflect  the  lives  of 
the  native  Americans  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin. 
These  people  have  never  explored  life  subjec 
tively.  The  American  subconsciousness  is  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  a  sealed  book.  The 
poverty  of  the  American  Anglo-Saxon  mind 
consists  in  this  very  superficiality,  this  strict 
adherence  to  the  surface  of  life.  It  is  a  limita 
tion,  taken  over  with  some  things  that  are 
good,  like  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus  and  the 
principle  of  representative  government,  from 
the  British.  Charles  Dickens,  for  instance,  is 
a  realist  of  sorts,  and  if  he  lacks  the  artistry 
of  Howells,  he  is  for  all  that  a  genius  of  the 
highest  order  whose  characters  have  no  souls 
in  any  psychological  sense  of  the  term.  He, 
too,  never  suspected  the  subconscious  mind  as 
Shakespeare  read  it  in  Lady  Macbeth. 

The  practical  result  of  the  triumph  of  the 
art  of  Howells  in  fiction  has  been  to  render 
dominant  a  school  of  American  writers  who 

203 


William  Dean  Howells 

may  be  described  as  reporters  of  the  surface 
of  things.  Howells  is  a  reporter — a  reporter 
of  genius,  to  repeat,  a  humorist  of  the  rarest 
gifts,  an  artist  with  words,  but  still  a  reporter. 
His  followers  are  reporters.  The  writers  of 
our  day  are  reporters  when  they  deal  in  the 
thing  they  call  fiction.  That  is  why  we  have 
men  and  women  who  get  us  nowhere  although 
they  write  amazing  short  stories  of  New  Eng 
land  country  life,  amazingly  photographic 
realizations  of  the  countenances  of  the  New 
England  woman,  her  peculiarities  of  vocab 
ulary,  her  remarks  on  the  weather,  her  drol 
leries.  Other  "masters"  of  this  Howells 
school  devote  themselves  to  a  minute  study  of 
the  natives  of  our  middle  west.  They  tran 
scribe  the  scenery  of  the  region.  They  repro 
duce  the  industrial  conditions  with  loving 
fidelity.  The  mountaineers  of  Tennessee,  the 
working  people  of  Rhode  Island,  the  men  of 
the  great  plains  across  which  the  cowboy  once 
galloped  emerge  in  the  novels  of  the  realistic 
school — I  do  not  affect  to  employ  the  lingo  of 

204 


"Gerfaut" 

these  people  quite  as  they  affect  to  employ  it 
themselves — with  quaintness,  startlingly  or 
dramatically. 

The  difficulty  with  it  all  remains  the  one 
that  limited  Charles  de  Bernard  when  he 
essayed  to  write  like  Balzac.  "Gerfaut"  is 
the  best  novel  of  the  school  founded  upon  the 
methods  of  Balzac.  No  doubt  it  would  be 
easy  enough  to  name  the  best  novel  written  by 
the  followers  of  Howells.  Nevertheless,  a 
school  runs  the  risk  of  producing  but  one 
master — its  founder.  There  is  but  one  Bal 
zac.  There  is  but  one  William  Dean  How- 
ells.  He  seems  certain  that  his  methods  are 
alone  legitimate,  as  may  be  noted  from  his 
remarks  regarding  Charles  Reade  in  "My 
Literary  Passions."  Naturally,  if  fiction  is  to 
be  regarded  as  reporting  with  genius,  Howells 
is  one  of  the  masters  of  the  art  of  fiction. 
That  is  the  way  the  formulas  of  a  master  are 
apt  to  work  out  in  practice.  He  lays  down 
the  law  with  authority.  And  what  is  the  law? 
The  way  to  do  a  thing  is  the  master's  way. 

205 


William  Dean  Howells 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  has  to  be  dismissed  with 
abruptness  as  an  incompetent  and  Howells 
achieves  even  that  with  pontifical  fidelity  to 
dogma.  William  Dean  Howells  is,  there 
fore,  worthless  as  a  critic  unless  he  is  telling 
us,  with  quite  unconscious  egotism,  how  he 
does  things  himself.  Young  writers  who  do 
their  work  according  to  the  Howells  formulas 
have  promise.  This  explains  his  numerous 
"discoveries."  The  second  rate  qualities  of 
the  writers  of  our  time  whom  Mr.  Howells  has 
praised  are  easily  accounted  for.  His  influence 
upon  the  "great"  New  York  periodicals,  con 
sciously  exercised  perhaps  or  unconsciously 
endured,  as  the  case  may  be,  has  sacrificed  the 
vigor  of  our  literature  to  mere  prettiness.  He, 
more  than  any  other  one  writer,  has  rendered 
contemporary  American  literature  a  thin 
syrup,  perfumed  to  a  feminized  taste.  There 
is  nothing  in  the  form  of  a  man's  meal  in  the 
literary  feasts  spread  by  the  Howells  school  of 
writers.  These  men  and  these  women  would 
not  allow  themselves  to  be  referred  to  as  a 

206 


Science 


Howells  school.     They  comprise  in  truth  noth 
ing  else. 

This  point  may  be  more  adequately  stated 
by  borrowing  an  illustration  from  the  field  of 
science.  There  are  two  methods  of  adding  to 
the  accumulated  stores  of  scientific  knowl 
edge.  We  have,  for  instance,  the  competent 
and  conscientious  observer  of  facts  in  the 
department  of  botany  or  of  biology.  Observ 
ations  extend  over  a  series  of  years.  Special 
ists  of  rare  endowments  might  make  these 
observations  to  infinity.  The  results  would 
be  of  the  deepest  interest  and  importance. 
Nevertheless,  the  advance  in  scientific  knowl 
edge  would  prove  inconsiderable  until  the 
genius  appeared  who  could  base  a  luminous 
generalization  upon  the  mass  of  all  this  data. 
The  generalization  knits  the  facts  together  but 
it  does  more  than  that.  It  points  the  way  to 
fresh  discovery.  This  is  the  explanation  of 
the  greatness  of,  say,  Alfred  Russel  Wallace. 
That  evolutionist  spent  a  comparatively  small 
amount  of  his  time  in  the  accumulation  of  his 

207 


William  Dean  Howells 

facts  and  specimens.  It  was  the  generaliza 
tion  he  based  upon  them  that  revolutionized 
our  way  of  looking  at  the  history  of  the  world 
of  zoology  and  indicated  a  path  to  the  revela 
tion  of  the  mystery  of  life  in  an  organism. 
The  laboratories  are  full  of  students  who  can 
observe  minutely  and  report  with  accuracy. 
The  man  who  frames  the  luminous  generaliza 
tion  is  rare  indeed. 

In  precisely  the  same  way,  the  Howells 
school  of  American  writers  is  crowded  with 
men  and  women  who  study  local  color,  who 
report  the  eccentric  behavior  of  some  rural 
swain,  who  give  us  dialogue  that  arrests  and 
who  crowd  the  canvas  with  sweet  girls.  The 
result  is  very  interesting,  very  charming.  It 
gets  us  nowhere.  We  are  brought  no  nearer 
the  heart  of  life's  mystery  by  all  these  novels 
and  tales  and  short  stories  of  the  Jews  of  the 
New  York  East  Side  or  the  solid  business  men 
of  Chicago.  We  discover  nothing  about  life. 
There  is  no  great  interpretation  of  it.  We  do 

Inot  rise  from  the  perusal  of  all  these  minute 
208 


A  Manner 


transcriptions  with  a  sense  of  anything  but  the 
cleverness  of  the  writer.  That  is  always  more 
or  less  obvious.  The  narrative  art  is  inva 
riably  caught  from  Howells.  Our  young 
writers  may  be  unaware  of  their  debt  to  the 
author  of  "The  Kentons,"  but  the  simple 
truth  is  that  the  supple,  smooth,  delicate  nar 
rative  art  of  our  time  and  country  was  caught 
from  Howells  and  from  him  alone.  In  his 
hands,  in  his  prime,  the  style  was  a  revelation 
but  it  must  be  conceded  that  nowadays  the 
manner — unless  he  be  writing — grows  some 
what  fatiguing. 

I  think,  therefore,  that  in  his  great  work  as 
a  writer  of  fiction  and  in  his  inadequacy  as  a 
critic  of  it,  Howells  reveals  himself  as  essen 
tially   a   native    American   of   Anglo-Saxon 
origin.     I  cannot  perceive  a  touch  of  the  Kelt 
in  his  genius  at  all,  however  the  thing  may  be 
in  his  blood.     When  I  say  of  Howells  that  he 
is  a  native  American  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin  I 
\  mean  merely  that  in  his  fiction  and  in  his  criti- 
|[cism  his  attitude  is  intolerant.     He  is  a  bigot 

209 


William  Dean  Howells 

— a  genial,  noble  bigot  with  all  the  charm  so 
often  displayed  by  that  type.  He  has  bred  a 
tribe  of  bigots  who  write  preposterous  and  im 
possible  novels  of  the  most  careful  accuracy 
of  observation  and  of  stenographic  fidelity  in 
the  matter  of  dialogue  and  of  a  most  out 
rageous  snobbishness  in  dealing  with  the  poor. 
Poverty  in  an  American  novel  of  the  Howells 
type  is  dealt  with  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
comic.  This  is  one  defect  of  the  method. 
There  must  be  no  sympathy  of  insight  but  a 
series  of  clever  impressions  from  that  report 
er's  note  book.  Here  we  have  the  source  of 
the  mystification  attending  all  this — the 
genius  with  which  it  is  done.  The  amazing 
thing  about  Howells  is  the  perfect  style  in 
which  his  ignorance  of  the  nature  of  literature 
in  relation  to  life  is  embodied.  No  man  ever 
wrote  out  his  own  vacuity  with  more  beauty 
of  manner. 

The  "guide  book"  quality  in  so  many  of  the 
stories  of  Howells  is  a  consequence  of  this 
manner  and  this  method.  Chapter  after 

210 


Atmosphere 

chapter  in  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  is  a 
manual  of  the  etiquette  of  the  period.  Pas 
sage  after  passage  in  "The  Minister's  Charge" 
is  a  study  of  the  police  system  of  Boston  in  its 
relation  to  a  particular  neighborhood.  It  is 
interesting  to  notice  how  brilliant  a  Howells 
novel  is  when  he  happens  to  be  dealing  with 
neighborhoods  and  types  that  can  be  made  the 
subject  of  detailed  first  hand  investigation  in 
the  manner  of  a  pawnbroker  going  over  an 
article  upon  which  he  contemplates  a  loan,  or, 
let  us  say,  of  an  entomologist  looking  at  a  bee 
or  an  ant  under  glass.  When,  however, 
Howells  is  transferred  to  an  environment  he 
has  had  no  opportunity  to  study  or  into  an 
atmosphere  he  does  not  habitually  breathe,  he 
seems  lost,  unable  to  cope  with  the  material. 
The  explanation  is  that  topography,  objects, 
material  items,  are  his  all  in  all.  He  does  not 
get  below  these  physical  manifestations  of  life 
to  the  life  itself,  the  essence,  the  soul.  Hence 
his  tales  of  Italian  places  and  people,  based 
ipon  his  personal  and  first  hand  acquaintance 
211 


William  Dean  Howells 

with  the  land,  are  better  than  his  tales  of  New 
York.  He  conveys  the  effect  of  not  knowing 
New  York,  of  not  being  steeped  in  its  atmos 
phere.  New  York  is  human,  throbbing,  freed 
from  the  domination  of  the  native  American 
of  Anglo-Saxon  origin,  whose  idea  of  a  tale  of 
the  great  city  takes  the  form  of  descriptions  of 
Madison  Square  on  a  cool  morning,  let  us  say, 
enriched  by  the  quaint  costumes  of  some 
loafers  on  a  bench  and  the  uncouth  witticisms 
they  exchange  when  the  heroine  passed  deli 
cately  by. 

Howells,  then,  is  great  when  he  is  dealing  in 
the  trivial  and  trivial  when  he  encounters  the 
great.  Love  such  as  Clarissa  Harlowe  knew, 
fondness  like  that  of  Goriot,  passion  like  that 
inspired  by  Valerie  Marneffe,  womanhood 
even  in  its  less  inspired  glory  as  revealed  in 
the  Lydia  Gwilt  of  Wilkie  Collins,  for 
instance — these  are  beyond  Howells  precisely 
because  they  are  beyond  his  countrymen  in  the 
racial  sense.  The  Anglo-Saxon  world  is  a 
surface  world,  a  region  of  property  and  insti- 

212 


Dominant 


tutions,  of  forms  and  social  conventions,  of 
legal  technicalities.  In  terms  of  the  Freudian 
psychology,  it  is  a  world  of  "repression"  in 
which  nothing  is  ever  permitted  to  emerge 
except  "symbols,"  as  the  experts  in  this  line 
say.  His  tales  of  New  York  life  are,  on  the 
whole,  unsatisfactory  because  New  York  life 
does  not  lend  itself  to  his  theory  of  his  art.  It 
does  not  lend  itself  to  treatment  after  the 
manner  of  the  dominant  American  school  of 
writers,  the  purveyors  of  stories  about  nothing 
in  particular  told  with  exquisite  technique. 
Howells  is,  of  course,  much  greater  than  his 
school.  No  member  of  it  has  produced,  for 
example,  a  volume  equal  to  "A  Boy's  Town," 
one  of  the  representative  emanations  of  the 
mind  of  Howells. 

The  most  disconcerting  experience  of  all 
awaits  us  when  we  set  foot  upon  the  solid  rock 
of  the  Howells  world.  It  crumbles  beneath 
our  feet.  His  realism  is  without  reality. 
His  waking  state  is  a  dream.  His  characters 
are  ghosts.  To  comprehend  this  more  fully, 

213 


William  Dean  Howells 

we  must  realize  that  precisely  as  in  the  realm 
of  the  mental,  the  psychological,  the  subcon 
scious  is  seen  to  be  the  key  to  the  conscious 
state,  so  in  the  material  world  its  meaning 
resides  in  the  spiritual  fact  that  underlies  it. 
The  thing  we  call  life  is  a  curtain.  The  lesson 
we  get  from  Howells  seems  to  be  that  we  must 
wait  for  the  hand  of  death  to  lift  the  curtain. 
He  would  not  see  in  the  thing  we  call  life  a 
curtain  at  all  or  rather  he  would  use  the  term 
as  a  sort  of  poetical  figure^  an  illustration. 
The  poetry  of  Howells,  such  as  it  is,  reflects 
this  attitude  of  his.  Never  was  there  such 
realism — in  the  Howells  sense — in  rhyme, 
such  sophistication  in  the  Boston  sense.  It 
has  no  spirituality  except  that  of  the  hard  and 
cold  intelligence.  It  is  based  upon  sense  per 
ception,  human  experience. 

Sense  perception  is  the  foundation"  of  the  art 
of  Howells.  He  deals  in  what  can  be  seen, 
handled  and  touched  mortally.  Now,  nothing 
is  more  surely  established  by  the  experience 
of  mankind  than  the  unreality  of  the  purely 

814 


Psychic 


objective  and  material  manifestations  of  what 
we  call  the  world.  That  is  the  lesson  of 
"Hamlet."  The  world  as  we  know  it  is  a 
series  of  symbols.  It  has  a  meaning  beyond 
the  appearance  of  things.  The  physicist 
expresses  this  truth  by  an  argument  to  suggest 
that  all  matter  is  a  form  of  electrical  energy. 
The  expert  in  radioactivity  may  be  wrong  in 
hinting  that  all  the  elements  are  stages  of  one 
another,  that  there  is  taking  place  a  trans 
mutation  like  that  of  which  the  alchemists 
dreamed.  Still,  he  is  getting  at  the  soul  of  his 
subject.  The  physician  denies  that  disease  is 
anything  but  a  relation  of  one  organism  to 
another.  It  is  not  an  entity,  an  independent 
existence.  Here,  again,  we  are  getting  to  the 
soul  of  the  subject.  It  would  be  easy  to  run 
through  all  departments  of  human  activity 
and  find  realism,  the  Hbwells  philosophy,  a 
dethroned  monarch  of  the  mind.  The  whole 
of  science  seems  to  have  been  captured  by  the 
romanticists.  It  is  the  romanticists  who  make 
all  the  luminous  generalizations.  They  frame 

215 


William  Dean  Howells 

the  bold  speculations  with  the  aid  of  the 
scientific  imagination.  Claude  Bernard,  for 
instance,  is  to  pathology  what  Edgar  Allan 
Poe  is  in  literature.  The  realistic  methods  of 
a  Howells,  applied  to  chemistry,  would  have 
made  that  science  sterile.  Not  the  careful 
accumulation  of  facts,  important  as  that  may 
be,  but  the  elucidation  of  the  facts  through  the 
boldest  possible  use  of  the  imagination,  the 
fancy,  the  psychological  insight,  will  yield  the 
soul  of  truth. 

Especially  mischievous  has  been  the  influ 
ence  of  Howells  upon  the  short  story,  the 
literary  form  which  owes  so  much  to  the  genius 
he  belittles,  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

The  short  stories  glorified  in  the  criticism 
of  William  Dean  Howells  amount  to  nothing 
but  monographs  upon  the  behavior  of  New 
England  organisms.  As  such  they  have  a 
certain  interest  but  they  are  of  infinitely  less 
importance  than  are  those  monographs  upon 
the  behavior  of  the  lower  organisms  which 
emerge  from  time  to  time  in  the  form  of  bio- 

216 


"Types" 

logical  bulletins  issued  by  some  laboratory  or 
other.  The  short  stories  in  question  are 
written  with  infinite  art.  They  are  too  often 
servile  imitations  of  the  Howells  manner. 
They  go  into  the  details  of  the  domestic 
economy  of  a  New  England  spinster,  reveal 
ing  her  as  a  picker  of  currants  in  a  back 
garden,  let  us  say,  and  as  a  jilt  because  she 
preferred  to  die  an  old  maid.  There  has 
ensued  at  the  instigation  of  Howells  an  enor 
mous  multiplicaiton  of  this  type  of  short  story, 
emanating  as  a  rule  from  the  pens  of  women 
who  create  ridiculous  reputations  for  them 
selves  because  they  give  us  "types."  What 
we  want  is  a  short  story  that  will  not  be  merely 
a  well  written  monograph  according  to  the 
Howells  formula.  We  want  something  in 
the  form  of  a  short  story  that  comes  to  grips 
with  the  ultimate,  a  look  behind  this  curtain. 
Hence  the  art  of  Howells  is  barren.  It  is 
great  art,  but  it  is  art  and  nothing  more.  It 
is  not  truth  in  the  large  but  an  accumulation 
of  little  truths  exquisitely  arranged.  His 

217 


William  Dean  Howells 

creative  work  suggests  those  rooms  filled  with 
bric-a-bracpf  which  he  makes  such  unsparing 
fun.  Howells  teaches  us  how  to  conduct  our 
selves  in  the  presence  of  ladies  and  gentlemen 
who  are  native  Americans  of  Anglo-Saxon 
origin.  He  essays  to  do  more  than  this.  He 
has  tried  in  some  of  his  later  studies  of  New 
York  to  assume  a  parlor  Socialism  of  a  fem 
inine  kind  but  it  is  a  display  of  ineffectually. 
He  gives  the  effect  of  a  man  throwing  beans, 
at  the  pillars  of  society.  His  thinking  on 
social  subjects  is  well  fitted  for  the  kind  of 
minds  his  heroines  have — his  Lydia  Bloods 
and  his  Marcia  Hubbards  and  his  Irene  Lap- 
hams  and  his  Annie  Kilburns.  He  has  no 
large  grasp  of  anything.  He  does  not  think. 
He  merely  observes  and  jots  down  impres 
sions.  He  has  not  contributed  a  solitary  gen 
eralization  of  a  luminous  kind — even  erron 
eous — to  literary  criticism  in  all  the  years  of 
his  reign  over  the  native  American  school  of 
Anglo-Saxon  realism.  Howells  will  never  be 
superseded  because  there  is  nothing  about  him 

218 


School 


to  supersede.  He  has  not  made  anything 
original  even  in  the  way  of  a  mistake.  He  is 
like  his  whole  school  in  assuming  that  what 
ever  he  can  not  do  is  necessarily  the  wrong 
thing  to  do.  A  great  deal  of  what  goes  by  the 
name  of  literary  criticism  amounts  to  no  more 
than  the  condemnation  by  a  master  in  one 
creative  field  of  the  products  of  the  master  in 
another  field.  The  writer  who  can  not  use  his 
imagination  warns  us  with  a  sneer  against  the 
imaginative  school.  He  can  not  do  the  work 
of  Poe.  Therefore  the  methods  and  the  criti 
cism  of  Poe  are  "worthless."  Howells  has 
the  fatuity  to  talk  like  that. 

The  ostentatious  fashion  in  which  the  native 
American  school  of  dominant  Anglo-Saxon 
writers  of  the  Howells  breed  has  turned  its 
back  upon  Poe  is  about  to  be  avenged.  The 
imbecility  of  the  criticism  of  Poe  by  this  school 
is  sufficiently  proved  by  the  latest  discoveries 
in  psychoanalysis.  Death  is  revealed  in  the 
Freudian  psychology  as  a  symbol  of  sex.  We 
know  now,  for  example,  what  the  imbecility  of 

219 


William  Dean  Howells 

the  Anglo-Saxons  like  Stedman  missed  alto 
gether.  The  "symbolism"  that  caused  Poe  to 
suggest  the  idea  of  death  was  his  mode  of 
reference  to  an  ecstasy  of  love  realized 
through  the  instrumentality  of  the  physical 
organism  as  the  soul  emerged  upon  a  spiritual 
plane.  This  revelation  is  but  one  among 
many  due  to  that  very  investigation  of  the 
subconscious  which  so  discredits  the  whole 
Howells  school  of  realism.  The  "school"  in 
sists  that  Poe  never  dealt  in  sex.  Thus,  Ed 
mund  Clarence  Stedman  makes  a  mad  remark 
on  the  subject  of  Poe:  "There  is  not  an 
unchaste  suggestion  in  the  whole  course  of  his 
writings."  The  truth  is  that  of  all  the  poets 
who  have  used  the  English  tongue  Poe  is  the 
most  erotic.  This  real  truth  about  him  has 
been  obscured  by  the  imbecility  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  criticism.  It  is  rudely  Philistine  to 
blink  the  eroticism  of  Poe  any  longer,  however 
well  established  be  the  convention  of  his 
chastity. 

Perfect  artist  that  he  is,  Poe  insinuates  the 
220 


"O  Lady!" 

sorcery  of  sex  with  refinement,  subtly.  Never 
will  he  shock  us  vulgarly  with  what  is  coarse. 
His  manner  is  that  of  those  sanctified  and 
pious  bawds  against  whom  Polonius  warned 
Ophelia.  Take  Poe  in  his  characteristically 
voluptuous  mood: 

O  lady  bright !  can  it  be  right, 

This  window  open  to  the  night? 

The  wanton  airs,  from  the  tree-top, 

Laughingly  through  the  lattice  drop; 

The  bodiless  airs,  a  wizard  rout, 

Flit  through  thy  chamber  in  and  out, 

And  wave  the  curtain  canopy 

So  fitfully,  so  fearfully, 

Above  the  closed  and  fringed  lid 

'Neath  which  thy  slumb'ring  soul  lies  hid, 

That,  o'er  the  floor  and  down  the  wall 

Like  ghosts  the  shadows  rise  and  fall. 

O  lady  dear,  hast  thou  no  fear? 

How  exquisite!  And  how  erotically  the 
poet  gloats  as  he  stands  "beneath  the  mystic 
moon" ! 

No  one  who  comprehends  Poe  need  now 
be  told  that  the  lady  turns  out  to  be  a  corpse. 
Only  through  the  medium  of  death  dare  the 

221 


William  Dean  Howells 

poet  attain  the  climax  of  his  orgiastic  frenzy. 
Once,  taken  off  his  guard,  he  confesses : 

these  roses 

That  gave  out,  in  return  for  the  love-light, 
Their  odorous  souls  in  an  ecstatic  death. 

Poe  is  so  highly  erotic  that  he  cannot, 
indeed,  bring  even  the  moon  into  his  verse 
without  casting  a  doubt  upon  her  established 
reputation  for  chastity.  This  he  will  not  do 
chivalrously.  He  proclaims  her  burning  con 
sciousness  of  the  guiltiest  kind  of  passion: 

Tottering  above 

In  her  highest  noon, 

The  enamored  moon 
Blushes  with  love ! 

If  this  be  deemed  a  forcing  of  the  point,  be 
it  noted  that  the  poem  from  which  it  has  come 
glorifies  an  angel  out  of  the  Koran.  Poe's 
paradise  is  the  sensual  one.  A  Moslem  would 
know  it  by  the  fleshly  gyrations  of  its  houris, 
dwelt  upon  deliciously  elsewhere: 

And  all  my  days  are  trances, 

And  all  my  nightly  dreams  ,     , 

222 


Orgies 


Are  where  thy  dark  eye  glances, 

And  where  thy   footstep   gleams — 

In  what  ethereal  dances, 
By  what  eternal  streams ! 

Observe  the  cunning  of  "ethereal  dances." 
This  poet  has  many  tricks  by  means  of  which 
he  revels  in  a  triumph  of  the  flesh  before  our 
eyes,  but  his  favorite  trick  is  a  delineation  of 
his  Bacchanals  as  ethereal  sprites,  celestial 
voluptuaries  whose  thrills  are  those  of  sex : 

For  her  soul  gives  me  sigh  for  sigh. 

Another  of  his  devices  is  to  drag  in  the  cir 
cumstance  that  the  parties  to  the  orgy  are  in 
wedlock,  and  this  difficulty  he  negotiates  with 
miraculous  refinement: 

And  so,  all  the  night-tide,  I  lie  down  by  the  side 
Of  my  darling — my  darling — my  life  and  my  bride. 

Death  to  Poe  is  a  tempting  portal  to  the 
delights  of  Tarquin,  and  Death,  like  the  un 
chaste  Poe  himself,  is  ever  in  quest  of  a 
beautiful  young  woman.  Herein  resides  the 
heart  of  this  poet's  mystery.  The  Anglo- 

223 


William  Dean  Howells 

Saxon  world  does  not  endure  a  poetical  ex 
pression  of  Poe's  frenzy,  except  in  symbol. 
Death  provided  that.  Poe  seems  on  one  oc 
casion,  it  is  true,  to  welcome  Death  as  a  liber 
ator  from  the  flames  of  his  flesh : 

And  oh !  of  all  tortures, 

That  torture  the  worst 
Has  abated — the  terrible 

Torture  of  thirst 
For  the  napthaline  river 

Of  Passion  accurst ! 

How  greatly  said! 

He  is  dead,  this  most  carnal  of  the  poets, 
dead  and  in  his  grave,  there  giving  thanks  for 
his  release  from  the  fury  of  his  being.  Yet, 
after  a  few  stanzas,  he  permits  himself  the 
most  exquisite,  the  most  alluring,  the  most 
delicate  and  delicious  of  all  the  obscenities  in 
poetry: 

Drowned  in  a  bath 

Of  the  tresses  of  Annie ! 

Of  all  the  poets  who  have  used  the  English 
tongue,  to  repeat,  Poe  is  the  most  erotic. 

224 


Ulalume 


"Ulalume"  is  one  illustration,  and  by  no  means 
the  most  striking. 

In  its  opening  stanza,  the  poet  is  disclosed 
near  a  dank  tarn.  His  heart  is  aflame  but 
he  has  taken  refuge  from  the  passions  consum 
ing  him  by  a  desperate  appeal  to  the  noble 
side  of  him,  to  his  own  soul.  St.  Anthony  did 
not  burn  in  the  desert  like  Poe  in  that  region 
of  Weir: 

Here  once,  through  an  alley  Titanic 

Of  cypress,  I  roamed  with  my  soul — 
Of  cypress,  with  Psyche,  my  Soul. 

These  were  days  when  my  heart  was  volcanic 
As  the  scoriae  rivers  that  roll, 
As  the  lavas  that  restlessly  roll 

Their  sulphurous  currents  down  Yaanek 
In  the  ultimate  climes  of  the  pole, 

That  groan  as  they  roll  down  Mount  Yaanek 
In  the  realms  of  the  boreal  pole. 

In  the  next  lines  we  ascertain  that  the  poet 
had  never  a  suspicion  of  the  form  to  be  as 
sumed  by  the  temptation,  the  terrible  temp 
tation,  lurking  in  these  realms  of  memory  and 
imagination.  He  is  in  communion  with  his 
soul: 

225. 


William  Dean  Howells 

Our  talk  had  been  serious  and  sober, 

But  our  thoughts  they  were  palsied  and  sere, 
Our  memories  were  treacherous  and  sere, 

For  we  knew  not  the  month  was  October, 

And  we  marked  not  the  night  of  the  year, 

(Ah,  night  of  all  nights  in  the  year !) 
We  noted  not  the  dim  lake  of  Auber 
(Though  once  we  had  journeyed  down  here), 

Remembered  not  the  dank  tarn  of  Auber 

Nor  the  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir. 

Now  the  temptation  begins  its  work  of  sug 
gestion.  The  moon!  Poe  cannot  see  it  or 
think  of  it  without  prophetic  raptures  of  the 
flesh.  But  I  must  not  anticipate.  What  an 
exquisite  moonrise  we  get!  I  know  of  noth 
ing  to  equal  this  in  all  literature: 

And  now,  as  the  night  was  senescent 
And  star-dials  pointed  to  morn, 
As  the  star-dials  hinted  of  morn, 
And  nebulous  lustre  was  born, 

Out  of  which  a  miraculous  crescent 
Arose  with  a  duplicate  horn, 

Astarte's  bediamonded  crescent 

Distinct  with  its  duplicate  horn. 

226 


The  Moon! 


The  spectacle  of  the  moon  sets  the  poet 
gloating  in  the  voluptuary's  characteristic  way 
for  the  moon  is  no  symbol  of  cold  purity  to  him. 
The  suggestion  is  that  of  the  flames  within 
him,  of  those  lavas: 

And  I  said — "She  is  warmer  than  Dian: 
She  rolls  through  an  ether  of  sighs, 
She  revels  in  a  region  of  sighs : 

She  has  seen  that  the  tears  are  not  dry  on 

These  cheeks,  where  the  worm  never  dies. 

And  has  come  past  the  stars  of  the  Lion 
To  point  us  the  path  to  the  skies, 
To  the  Lethean  peace  of  the  skies : 

Come  up,  in  despite  of  the  Lion, 

To  shine  on  us  with  her  bright  eyes 

The  moon  has  come  forth  from  her  cloud 
through  that  part  of  the  sky  in  which  the  won 
derful  constellation  burns.  The  worm  of  pas 
sion  never  dies  on  the  cheek  of  Poe's  fancy, 
over  which  it  crawls  redly.  At  the  climax  of 
the  physical  transports  occasioned  by  the  rise 
of  our  satellite  the  nobler  side  of  his  nature,  his 
very  soul,  addresses  its  appeal  that  he  resist 

227 


William  Dean  Howells 

Astarte,  a  carnal  aspect  of  the  thing  shining 
in  the  sky: 

Come  up  through  the  lair  of  the  Lion, 

With  love  in  her  luminous  eyes." 
But  Psyche,  uplifting  her  finger, 

Said — "Sadly  this  star  I  mistrust, 
Her  pallor  I  strangely  mistrust: 
Oh,  hasten ! — oh,  let  us  not  linger ! 

Oh,  fly ! — let  us  fly ! — for  we  must." 
In  terror  she  spoke,  letting  sink  her 

Wings  until  they  trailed  in  the  dust; 

But  the  passions  of  Poe  rage  more  redly  as 
he  gloats  upon  that  moon,  no  Diana  of  a  moon 
but  an  Astarte!  He  conquers  the  scruples 
of  his  better  nature  and  rushes  into  an  extreme 
of  the  carnal.  A  triumph  of  the  flesh  in  Poe 
is  symbolized  always  through  the  medium  of 
death  or  the  tomb: 

In  agony  sobbed,  letting  sink  her 

Plumes  till  they  trailed  in  the  dust, 
Till  they  sorrowfully  trailed  in  the  dust. 
Thus  I  pacified  Psyche  and  kissed  her, 
And  tempted  her  out  of  her  gloom, 
And  conquered  her  scruples  and  gloom; 
And  we  passed  to  the  end  of  the  vista, 

228 


Worm 


But  were  stopped  by  the  door  of  a  tomb, 

By  the  door  of  a  legended  tomb ; 
And  I  said — "What  is  written,  sweet  sister, 

On  the  door  of  this  legended  tomb?" 
She   replied — "Ulalume — Ulalume — 

Tis'the  vault  of  thy  lost  Ulalume!" 

Ulalume  is  the  name  of  the  fair  being  with 
whom  Poe  associates  himself  in  this  tale  of  a 
triumph  of  the  flesh.  It  is  no  part  of  Poe's 
plan  to  have  us  take  the  tomb  literally  any 
more  than  we  took  that  worm  literally  a  while 
ago: 

These  cheeks,  where  the  worm  never  dies. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  lady  is  "lost,"  that  is, 
lost  to  Poe.  She  was  a  woman  he  had  loved 
guiltily.  That  is  obvious  from  the  alarm  into 
which  his  soul  is  plunged  as  the  moon  rises,  in 
flaming  his  passion,  of  which  Ulalume  is  the 
object.  He  had  striven  to  put  her  from  his 
mind.  He  had  forgotten  her  for  an  instant. 
He  thought  he  had  left  the  dank  tarn  of  sen 
sualism.  He  must  close  with  the  confes 
sion: 

229 


William  Dean  Howells 

Then  my  heart  it  grew  ashen  and  sober 

As  the  leaves  that  were  crisped  and  sere, 
As  the  leaves  that  were  withering  with  sere, 

And  I  cried — "It  was  surely  October 
On  this  very  night  of  last  year 
That  I  journeyed — I  journeyed  down  here, 
That  I  brought  a  dead  burden  down  here; 
On  this  night  of  all  nights  in  the  year, 
Ah,  what  demon  has  tempted  me  here ! 

Well  I  know  now  this  dim  lake  of  Auber, 
This  misty  mid  region  of  Weir; 

Well  I  know  now  this  dank  tarn  of  Auber, 
This  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir." 

Nevertheless,  we  have  these  native  Ameri 
cans  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin  insisting  that  Poe 
never  dealt  in  sex!  Their  comprehension  of 
him  is  sufficiently  indicated  by  that  one  detail, 
proven  up  to  the  hilt  by  the  new  psychology. 
Poe  conveys  to  us  a  sense  of  the  unreality  of 
all  that  in  the  world  of  Howells  passes  for  the 
solid  rock.  That  is,  subconsciously,  the  ex 
planation  of  the  Howells  attitude  to  Poe,  and 
by  the  Howells  attitude  I  refer  to  the  "school." 
Such  a  school!  I  read  a  preface  to  a  tale  by 
one  of  its  members  in  the  course  of  which  he 

230 


Alas! 


boasted  of  it  as  a  record  of  a  cowboy  life  that 
had  passed  away.  Such  was  its  claim  to  im 
mortality  as  a  work  of  art.  There  was  not 
the  slightest  effort  at  an  interpretation  of  life 
in  the  work,  no  grasp  upon  the  meaning  of 
anything,  no  seizure  of  the  soul  of  circum 
stance.  Towns  were  "shot  up"  and  meals 
were  eaten  at  frontier  boarding  houses  and  a 
"heroine"  was  "loved."  Such  is  the  garbage 
purveyed  by  the  Howells  school  at  its  worst 
and  Howells  himself  has  the  artlessness  to 
praise  it  in  his  volume  called  "Literature  and 
Life."  Luckily,  the  critics  of  the  school  he 
despises  do  not  retort  in  the  spirit  of  his  own 
attitude  to  Poe.  It  is  imbecile  to  deny  that 
the  art  of  Howells  is  great,  frankly  British  to 
set  him  below  Hardy  or  Meredith.  Only  a 
genius  of  the  highest  order,  though  handi 
capped  by  the  limitations  of  the  native  Ameri 
can  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin,  could  have  given 
us  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,"  have  created 
a  whole  family  of  Coreys,  have  painted  a  Mar- 
cia  Hubbard.  And  what  if  Howells  be  a 

231 


William  Dean  Howells 

native  American  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin? 
Homer  was  blind.  Coleridge  was  a  slave  to 
opium.  Poe  drank. 


232 


INDEX 

THOSE  of  my  readers  who  have  been  reared 
in  the  British  literary  superstition  will  expect 
me  to  have  compiled  this  index  in  the  approved 
style  of  Doctor  Dryasdust.  It  happens  that 
I  have  long  suffered  at  the  hands  of  the  makers 
of  indexes  and  I  strive  to  give  those  hacks  a 
lead.  Let  them  throw  off  the  shackles  of  the 
superstition  that  makes  their  efforts  vain  and 
give  us  indexes  that  we  shall  want  to  read  for 
their  pith,  their  point,  their  provocativeness. 
Thunder  in  the  index — yes! 

ABBOTT,    LEONARD    DALTON.  criticism   they   indulge   in   so 

The   sage  who   indulges  in   a  absurdly.    20 

profound  reflection.     172  ^EKEAS.    He  got  away  from 

A  BOY'S  TOWN.     I  have  been  Dido.     66 

told  that  Howells  regards  this  A  FEARFUL  RESPONSIBILITY. 

as  his  representative  work  or  It  is  a  tale  of  the  time  when 

at  any  rate  one  of  his  great-  our  civil  war  raged  and  the 

est.    213  scene  is  Italy,  but  the  princi- 

ADAMS,    CHARLES    FRANCIS.  pal  characters  are  Americans. 

I  refer  to  the  one  who  passed  64 

away  in  1915.    87  A    HAZARD    OF    NEW    FOR- 

ADVERTISEMENTS.       Longing  TUNES.     This  is  not  to  me  the 

of  the  newspapers  for  them  is  great  Howells  novel.    161 

the   occasion   of   the   literary  ALCIBIADES.    He  gave  us  all 

233 


William  Dean  Howells 


a  lead  in  dealing  with  editors. 
26 

ALTRURIA.  This  region  sym 
bolizes  the  revolt  of  Howells 
from  the  orthodox  sociology. 
161 

AMERICAN".  The  prejudice 
against  everything  properly 
so-called  in  the  United  States. 
26 

AMERICAN  LITERARY  SUPER 
STITION*.  The  kind  created  by 
Howells.  179 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE.  The 
obstacle  to  its  appreciation  by 
ourselves.  2 

AMERICAN,  THE.  His  big 
otry  and  intolerance.  158 

AMERICAN,  THE.  I  think 
Howells  has  given  us  a  per 
manent  impression  of  this 
man.  He  gets  to  the  essence 
of  the  being.  His  sketch  of 
the  American  will  hence  be 
permanent.  31 

AMERICANS.  They  are  not 
gifted  as  a  people,  they  have 
no  genius,  they  are  not  a  na 
tion  of  artists  like  the  French. 
116 

AMERICAN  WRITERS.  I  ad 
dress  to  them  my  solemn  warn 
ing  to  keep  away  from  the 
English.  12 

A  MODERN  INSTANCE.  This 
Novel  has  the  finest  introduc 
tory  paragraph  I  ever  read.  52 


,  ANARCHISTS.  Those  in  Chi 
cago  were  executed  to  the  in 
dignation  of  our  great  author. 
164 

ANGLO-SAXON.  His  world 
is  the  paradise  of  Doctor  Dry 
asdust.  187 

ANGLO-SAXON.  The  native 
American  of  that  origin  has  a 
very  peculiar  attitude  to  liter 
ature  when  it  wears  the  British 
tag.  21 

ANGLO-SAXON.  The  native 
American  of  that  origin  is 
much  referred  to  in  these 
pages  but  the  word  occurs  in 
another  sense.  13 

ANNABEL  LEE.  It  is  an  ero 
tic  poem.  223 

ANNIE.     Remarks  upon  the 
verses  to  this  lady.     224 
i  ANNIE     KILBURN.    This    is 
the  queerest  spinster  in  How 
ells.    84 

ANTONINES,  THE.  Were 
they  as  respectable  as  our  Wil 
son?  165 

ANTONY,  Our  old  friend, 
Mark,  of  course.  66 

ANTONY,  MARK.  He  had 
his  knowledge  of  woman.  134 

ANTONY,  MARK.  He  was 
an  artist  in  love.  139 

APRIL  HOPES.  A  manual  of 
the  dialogue  of  lovers  and  a 
very  good  manual  too.  51 

APRIL     HOPES.    The     finest 


234 


Index 


humor  in  dialogue  form  in  the 
whole  range  of  English  fiction 
occurs  in  this  tale.  45 

ARIOSTO.  He  may  have  been 
a  realist.  170 

".  ARISTOCRACY.  Its  signif 
icance  as  the  American  ideal. 
123 

,  ARISTOCRACY.  The  Ameri 
can  passion.  124 

ART.  American  tempera 
ment  alien  to.  157 

ARTAGNAN,  D'.  I  confess  I 
don't  know  how  to  index  such 
a  name,  so  I  put  it  here  as  well 
as  elsewhere.  The  custom  of 
putting  an  entry  into  an  index 
and  telling  you  to  look  else 
where  ought  to  be  prohibited 
by  law.  Why  not  repeat  the 
information  under  two,  three 
or  even  four  headings  to  save 
the  trouble  of  looking  else 
where?  73 

ARTIST.  I  make  some  obser 
vations  on  the  word.  No 
doubt,  they  are  foolish  but 
they  do  not  seem  to  me  to  be 
so  foolish  as  some  of  those 
made  by  William  Crary 
Brownell.  25 

ARTIST.  The  greatest  in  the 
field  of  fiction  is  the  subject  of 
this  volume.  16 

ASPASIA.  She  is  mentioned, 
just  like  Cleopatra.  152 

ASTARTE.    The    significance 


of  this  term  as  opposed  to  the 
name  of  Diana.  223 

ATHENS.  The  schoolmaster 
at  this  place  got  a  box  on  the 
ear  from  Alcibiades.  The 
original  anecdote  is  in  Plut 
arch.  I  once  wrote  a  life  of 
Alcibiades  but ^iievft;  could  find 
a  publisher  for  It.  S?5 

ATMOSPHERE.  Can  Howells 
be  said  to  have  such  a  thing? 
I  wish  I  had  gone  into  this 
branch  of  my  topic  more  thor 
oughly,  more  lucidly.  But  for 
that  matter,  I  wish  this  whole 
book  were  a  trifle  more  inte 
grated.  27 

AUSTEN,  JANE.  Howells 
pays  her  a  tribute.  170 

AUSTEN,  JANE.  Why  How 
ells  revels  in  her.  185 

AUSTRALIA.  The  English 
written  in  that  great  continent 
is  better  than  the  English 
written  in  the  British  Isles  to 
day.  49 

A  WOMAN'S  REASON.  The 
story  is  the  true  Boston  epic. 
117 

AZTEC.  I  say  nothing  on 
the  subject  that  is  worth  the 
trouble  of  looking  up.  39 

BALZAC,  HONORE  DE.  He  is 
suggested  by  one  characteris 
tic  possessed  by  Howells.  "It 
is  the  opinion  of  many  of  Bal- 


235 


William  Dean  Howells 


zac's  admirers,  and  it  was  the 
general  verdict  of  his  day,  that 
in  all  this  the  greatest  tri 
umphs  are  the  characters  of 
women,"  says  Henry  James. 
"Every  French  critic  tells  us 
thajt  his  immense  success  came 
to  him  through  women — that 
they  constituted  his  first,  his 
last,  his  fondest  public." 
"Who  rendered  more  de- 
liciously  than  he,"  asks  Sainte- 
Beuve,  "the  duchesses  and  vis 
countesses  of  the  end  of  the 
Restoration — those  women  of 
thirty  who,  already  on  the 
stage,  awaited  their  painter 
with  a  vague  anxiety,  so  that 
when  he  and  they  stood  face 
to  face  there  was  a  sort  of 
electric  movement  of  recogni 
tion?"  32 

BALZAC,  HONORE  DE.  His 
atmosphere  is  so  typically 
French.  That  is  like  saying 
that  two  and  two  are  four,  I 
know,  but  if  you  look  up  my 
remark  it  will  not  seem  so  ob 
vious.  23 

BALZAC,  HONORE  DE.  No 
one  is  really  like  him.  110 

BALZAC,  HONORE  DE.  The 
English  have  produced  no 
novelist  of  his  rank  and  per 
haps  never  will.  6 

BALZAC,  HONORE  DE.  What 
he  would  have  called  the  thing 


we  of  to-day  call  manners.  118 

BARCHESTEE  TOWERS.  This 
is  a  great  Trollope  novel.  It 
is  quoted  on  the  subject  of 
fiction.  176 

BAUDELAIRE.  Perhaps  he 
was  not  so  immoral  as  I  sug 
gest.  I  really  don't  know.  56 

BECKY  SHARP.  Howells 
seem  incapable  of  handling 
such  a  type.  I  try  to  explain 
this.  67 

BERNARD,  CHARLES  DE.  He 
was  a  disciple  of  Balzac's,  and 
the  greatest  of  his  school.  205 

BERNARD,  CLAUDE.  A  com 
parison  of  him  with  Poe.  216 

BERTIE.  He  was  the  brother 
of  Charlotte  Stanhope  and 
one  would  have  to  know  one's 
Trollope  to  understand  how 
clever  the  reference  to  him 
really  is.  45 

BLOOMERS.  The  tragedy  of 
them  on  Mrs.  Barker.  130 

BOSTON.  "Boston  was  a  lit 
erary  center,  as  Weimar  was," 
says  Howells,  "and  as  Edin 
burgh  was.  It  felt  literature, 
as  those  capitals  felt  it,  and  if 
it  did  not  love  it  quite  so  much 
as  might  seem,  it  always  re 
spected  it.  To  be  quite  clear 
in  what  I  wish  to  say  of  the 
present  relation  of  Boston  to 
our  other  literary  centers,  I 
must  repeat  that  we  have  now 


236 


Index 


no  such  literary  center  as 
Boston  was.  Boston  itself  has 
perhaps  outgrown  the  literary 
consciousness  which  formerly 
distinguished  it  from  all  our 
other  large  towns.  In  a  place 
of  nearly  a  million  people  (I 
count  in  the  outlying  places) 
newspapers  must  be  more 
than  books;  and  that  alone 
says  everything."  A  glimpse 
into  the  city  of  caste.  87 

BOSTON.  In  my  opinion 
Howells  is  great  only  to  the 
extent  that  he  deals  with  this 
city  and  with  the  people  native 
to  it,  including  the  hinterland 
of  Boston,  that  is,  the  New 
England  states  and  the  New 
England  people.  I  think 
Howells  was  sensible  of  this 
when  he  wrote:  "I  doubt  if 
anywhere  in  the  world  there 
was  ever  so  much  taste  and 
feeling  for  literature  as  there 
was  in  that  Boston.  At  Edin 
burgh  (as  I  imagine  it)  there 
was  a  large  and  distinguished 
literary  class,  and  at  Weimar 
there  was  a  cultivated  court 
circle ;  but  in  Boston  there  was 
not  only  such  a  group  of  au 
thors  as  we  shall  hardly  see 
here  again  for  hundreds  of 
years,  but  there  was  such  re 
gard  for  them  and  their  call 
ing,  not  only  in  good  society, 


but  among  the  extremely  well- 
read  people  of  the  whole  intel 
ligent  city,  as  hardly  another 
community  has  shown."  I  am 
afraid  Howells  lost  terribly 
except  from  the  financial 
standpoint  by  his  desertion  of 
Boston  for  New  York.  I  wish 
I  had  said  this.  33 

BOTTOM,  THE  WEAVER.  His 
incarnation  in  the  Boston  of 
Howells  is  David  Sewell  and 
Howells  never  suspects  it.  97 

BOTTOM,  THE  WEAVER.  I 
fear  I  ought  to  have  mentioned 
him  in  discussing  the  native 
American  of  Anglo-Saxon  ori 
gin,  but  I  didn't.  78 

BOTTOM,  THE  WEAVER. 
Roaring  is  his  line.  190 

BOURGET,  PAUL.  He  is  just 
like  the  rest.  110 

BOYNTON,  DOCTOR.  The 
handling  of  this  character  in 
"The  Undiscovered  Country" 
is  a  miracle  of  humor  and 
kindness  blended  on  the  part 
of  Howells.  Boynton  is  ridicu 
lous  and  Howells  lets  us  see 
it  in  the  sweetest  and  most 
good  hearted  style.  50 

BRICK,  MR.  JEFFERSON.  He 
is  sadly  needed  as  a  critic  of 
literature  in  the  American 
field.  29 

BRITISH  CRITICISM.  A  warn 
ing  against.  38 


237 


William  Dean  Howells 


BRITISH  LITERARY  SUPERSTI 
TION.  Howells  is  its  supreme 
victim.  Ill 

BRITISH  LITERARY  SUPERSTI 
TION,  THE.  Howells  revolts" 
from  it  with  effect.  167 

BRITISH  LITERARY  SUPERSTI 
TION.  I  am  afraid  most  of 
our  critics  and  writers  have 
but  the  vaguest  notion  of  what 
it  means.  The  theme  is  opened 
inadequately,  I  fear.  1 

BRITISH  LITERARY  SUPERSTI 
TION,  THE.  Will  we  ever 
shake  it  off?  70 

BRITONS,  IMBECILITIES  OF 
THE.  A  large  topic !  I  can 
do  no  more  than  glance  at  it. 
I  ought  to  say  in  fairness  that 
I  dislike  Britons  heartily,  al 
though  it  is  true  that  they  have 
many  noble  qualities.  41 

BRONTE,  CHARLOTTE.  She 
could  write  a  man's  tale.  185 

BROWNELL,  WILLIAM  CRARY. 
I  ought  to  have  said  much 
more  about  this  man.  I  ad 
mire  his  honesty  in  revealing 
his  profound  contempt  for  all 
things  American  in  the  way  of 
literature.  He  has  the  "top- 
loftical"  attitude— the  attitude 
of  the  sneering  deity  in  a 
pagan  heaven.  He  makes  me 
very  tired  but  he  is  great  and 
ought  to  be  widely  read.  I 
wonder  if  he  is?  18 

238 


BROWNELL,  WILLIAM  CHARY. 
My  note  on  him  will  be  more 
intelligible  if  I  insert  here  a 
fragment  from  his  book,  a 
very  little  one,  on  criticism: 
"Reality  has  become  recog 
nized  as  the  one  vital  element 
of  significant  art,  and  it  seems 
unlikely  that  the  unreal  will 
ever  regain  the  empire  it  once 
possessed.  Its  loss,  at  all 
events,  is  not  ours,  since  it 
leaves  us  the  universe.  But  it 
is  obvious  that  'realism'  is  of 
ten  in  practice,  and  not  infre 
quently  in  conception,  a  very 
imperfect  treatment  of  real 
ity,  which  indeed  not  rarely 
receives  more  sympathetic  at 
tention  in  the  romantic  or  even 
the  classic  household.  Balzac 
is  a  realist,  and  at  times  the 
most  artificial  of  great  ro 
mancers.  George  Sand  is  a 
romanticist,  and  a  very  deep 
and  fundamental  reality  not 
rarely  underlies  her  superficial 
extravagances.  Fundamental 
ly,  truth — which  is  certainly 
none  other  than  reality — was 
her  inspiration,  as,  funda 
mentally,  it  certainly  was  not 
always  Balzac's."  This  kind 
of  thing  makes  me  sick  even 
if  W.  C.  Brownell  did  write 
it.  29 
BYRON.  He  is  by  no  means 


Index 


the  dead  cock  in  the  pit  sug 
gested  by  some  critics.  There 
ought  to  have  been  a  note  on 
'this  at  the  bottom  of  the  page. 
I  do  not  think  the  practice  of 
making  footnotes  is  a  bad  one. 
They  are  so  dull  as  a  rule. 
The  footnotes  of  George 
Saintsbury  in  his  three  volume 
"History  of  English  Prosody" 
are  screamingly  funny.  56 

BYRON.  What  he  knew  of 
women.  138 

BYZANTINE  EMPRESSES.  I 
fear  I  have  too  many  allusions 
to  passionate  females  of  this 
sort  in  modern  times  as  well 
as  in  ancient.  65 

CANADA.  She  is  the  home 
of  a  kind  of  English  that  is 
superior  to  the  English  written 
in  England.  49 

CAPULET,  A.  He  hated  the 
Montague.  149 

CASTE.  A  view  of  its 
strength  in  our  land.  122 

CASTE.  The  native  Amer 
ican  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin 
can  not  live  upon  any  other 
basis.  85 

CATHOLIC.  His  attitude  to 
criticism.  191 

CATULLUS.  His  modernity 
is  amazing.  He  is  the  hero  of 
the  affair  with  Lesbia  and  he 
celebrates  her  sparrow.  110 


CAVENDISH,  HOUSE  or. 
Dragged  in  by  way  of  illustra 
tion  and  for  no  other  purpose. 
11 

CHARM.  This  is  the  essen 
tial  American  trait.  125 

CHEMISTRY.  Is  that  Eng 
lish?  No.  7 

CHINGACHGOOK.  His  affin 
ity  with  Lapham.  154 

CICERO.  I  go  back  to  him. 
118 

CLARISSA  HARLOWE.  Marcia 
Hubbard  is  every  whit  as  won 
derful.  72 

CLEOPATRA.  Octavia  had  his 
suspicions  of  her.  164 

CLEOPATRA.  She  belongs  in 
the  book  with  the  rest  of  them. 
66 

COFFEE  POT.  The  episode  of 
this  domestic  utensil  in  "April 
Hopes"  is  the  most  humorous 
thing  in  fiction.  51 

COLERIDGE,  S.  T.  He  was  a 
slave  to  opium.  I  have  heard 
that  George  Crabbe  was.  232 

COLLINS,  WILKIE.  He  is  a 
much  neglected  genius  and  I 
take  advantage  of  an  oppor 
tunity  to  say  so.  42 

COLLINS,  WILKIE.  It  does 
not  matter  that  Trollope  dis 
parages  him.  101 

CONSTITUTION,  THE.  It  is  a 
masterpiece  of  romanticism, 
100 


239 


William  Dean  Howells 


COOPER,  J.  FEXIMORE.  He, 
too,  painted  a  native  Amer 
ican.  159 

COREY.  The  clan  is  delin 
eated  at  length.  119 

COREY.  The  family  give  a 
dinner  and  Lapham  is  invited 
with  his  whole  show.  151 

COREY.  The  girls  of  the 
family  belonged  in  the  high 
est  society.  143 

COREY.  The  young  one 
knew  lots  about  love.  140 

COREY  FAMILY.  These  peo 
ple  get  a  dig.  98 

COREYS.  "Bromfield  Corey," 
Howells  tells  us,  "was  to  come 
back  and  go  into  business  after 
a  time,  but  he  never  did  so. 
He  travelled  about  over  Eu 
rope,  and  travelled  handsome 
ly,  frequenting  good  society 
everywhere,  and  getting  him 
self  presented  at  several 
courts,  at  a  period  when  it  was 
a  distinction  to  do  so.  He  had 
always  sketched,  and  .with  his 
father's  leave  he  fixed  himself 
at  Rome,  where  he  remained 
studying  art  and  rounding  the 
being  inherited  from  his 
Yankee  progenitors,  till  there 
was  very  little  left  of  the  an 
cestral  angularities.  After 
ten  years  he  came  home  and 
painted  that  portrait  of  his 
father.  It  was  very  good,  if 


a  little  amateurish,  and  he 
might  have  made  himself  a 
name  as  a  painter  of  portraits 
if  he  had  not  had  so  much 
money.  But  he  had  plenty  of 
money,  though  by  this  time  he 
was  married  and  beginning  to 
have  a  family.  It  was  absurd 
for  him  to  paint  portraits  for 
pay,  and  ridiculous  to  paint 
them  for  nothing;  so  he  did 
not  paint  them  at  all.  He  con 
tinued  a  dilettante."  Their 
attitude  to  efficiency.  125 

CORNELIA  ROOT.  A  great 
study  in  the  hard  and  dutiful 
New  England  woman.  129 

CRABBE,  GEORGE.     He  had  an 
Edmund  Burke  to  go  to.    96 
CRITIC.    One  of  the  myste 
ries  about  him.     192 

CRITIC.  This  Howells  never 
was.  186 

CRITIC,  THE.  He  is  likely 
to  be  shabby.  187 

CRITICISM.  Hints  respecting 
its  real  nature.  189 

CRITICISM.  Inadequacy  of 
the  English  to.  6 

CRITICISM.  Nothing  of  the 
kind  ever  produced  by  Wil 
liam  Dean  Howells.  218 

CRITICISM.  The  English  a 
laughing  stock  to  the  continent 
of  Europe  in  this  field.  7 

CRITICISM  AND  FICTION. 
Ah  me!  The  good  old  times 


240 


Index 


have    changed    since    it    was 
written.     9 

CUPID  AND  PSYCHE.  Have  I 
dragged  them  in  awkwardly 
and  without  an  excuse?  I 
hope  not.  46 


DANTE.  I  have  actually 
read  him  and,  of  course,  How- 
ells  has.  57 

D'ARTAGNAN.  I  fall  with 
him  upon  the  bosom  of  Mi 
lady.  73 

DAUDET,  ALPHONSE.  He  is 
not  up  to  the  great  level  of  our 
Howells.  148 

DAVID  SEWELL.  He  was  the 
Boston  clergyman  who  thought 
he  knew  a  genius  when  he  saw 
one — like  so  many  of  our  pub 
lishers.  95 

DEATH.  It  is  the  symbol  of 
the  erotic  in  Foe.  219 

DECADENCE.     Howells     uses 
its  brilliance  to  achieve  ends 
that  are  Philistine.     109 
v~       DEMOCRACY.     American    an 
tipathy  to  it.     124 

DEMOCRACY.  It  is  fumbled 
at  by  America.  128 

DESPAIR.  That  of  Poe  is 
worthy  of  defense  in  the  ar 
tistic  implications  of  it  only. 
58 

DIALOGUE.  Howells  carries 
on  with  it.  49 


DIALOGUE.  Howells  handles 
it  divinely.  41 

DIALOGUE.  It  ministers  to 
the  progress  of  events.  "Of 
all  the  great  novelists,"  says 
Henry  James  of  Balzac,  "he  is 
the  weakest  in  talk;  his  con 
versations,  if  they  are  at  all 
prolonged,  become  unnatural, 
impossible.  One  of  his  pu 
pils,  as  they  say  in  French, 
Charles  de  Bernard  (who  had, 
however,  taken  most  justly  the 
measure  of  his  own  talent,  and 
never  indiscreetly  challenged 
comparison  with  the  master) 
— this  charming  writer,  with 
but  a  tenth  of  Balzac's  weight 
and  genius,  very  decidedly  ex 
cels  him  in  making  his  figures 
converse."  113 

DIALOGUE.  The  complexity 
of  the  Howells  conversations 
as  his  characters  unfold  their 
tales  is  worthy  of  the  observa 
tions  I  devote  to  it.  50 

DICKENS,  CHARLES.  He  had 
no  insight  into  the  soul  of  any 
thing.  203 

DICKENS,  CHARLES.  He  is 
not  a  great  literary  artist.  24 

DICKENS,  CHARLES.  He  un 
derstood  the  English  only 
after  a  fashion,  but  Howells 
understands  the  American 
through  and  through.  32 

DICKENS,       CHARLES.      His 


241 


William  Dean  Howells 


limitation  in  one  respect  is 
amazing,  ludicrous.  69 

DICKENS,  CHARLES.  His 
patronage  of  Poe.  4 

DICKENS,  CHARLES.  How 
he  misses  the  heart  of  woman. 
184 

DIDO.  She  seems  to  have 
lost  her  popularity.  At  any 
rate  references  to  her  are  less 
frequent  than  they  were  in  the 
time  of  Queen  Anne  and  even 
in  the  time  of  President  Madi 
son.  66 

DINNER.  One  is  given  by 
the  Coreys.  151 

DOCTOR  BREEN'S  PRACTICE. 
This  novel  is  rather  short  but 
it  is  a  masterpiece  of  literary 
art.  30 

DOCTOR  DRYASDUST.  A 
glimpse  into  his  soul.  187 

DOCTOR  DRYASDUST.  Hail  to 
our  good  old  friend.  107 

DOCTOR  MULBRIDOE.  "I 
don't  know,"  his  mother  said, 
"as  she'd  call  you  what  they 
call  a  gentleman."  Some  ob 
servations  upon  the  theme.  83 

DON  JUAN.  He  did  not 
know  women  so  well.  134 

DOSTOIEVSKY.  I  think  my 
self  courageous  in  pronounc 
ing  him  in  the  main  unread 
able.  178 

DOWSON,  ERNEST.  His  Cyn- 
ara  was  not  more  to  him  than 


Howell's  Marcia  is  to  me.  76 
DRINK.  The  word  has  an 
honored  place  in  the  history 
of  literature  owing  to  the  mis 
fortunes  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 
232 

DRUNK.  Difficulty  of  man 
aging  a  character  in  a  novel 
when  he  is  inebriated  is  ex 
treme.  I  find  Howells  refined, 
artistic,  perfect,  in  dealing 
with  the  emergency.  75 

EDITOR.  "I  think  it  a  great 
pity,"  says  Howells,  "that  edi 
tors  ever  deal  other  than 
frankly  with  young  contribu 
tors,  or  put  them  off  with 
smooth  generalities  of  excuse, 
instead  of  saying  they  do  not 
like  this  thing  or  that  offered 
them.  It  is  impossible  to 
make  a  criticism  of  all  re 
jected  manuscripts,  but  in  the 
case  of  those  which  show 
promise  I  think  it  is  quite  pos 
sible;  and  if  I  were  to  sin  my 
sins  over  again,  I  think  I 
should  sin  a  little  more  on  the 
side  of  candid  severity.'* 
Howells  in  that  capacity 
scored.  196 

EDITOR.  Literature  of  no 
particular  importance  to  him. 
194 

EDITOR.  Swagger  as  he  may 
about  New  York,  he  is  an  in- 


242 


Index 


competent  and  an  imbecile. 
198 

EDITOR.  Why  he  clings  to 
his  formula.  193 

EDITOR,  THE.  One  of  his 
imbecilities.  192 

EDDY,  MARY  BAKER  G.  A 
Christian  Science  view  of  her 
life  and  another  view.  190 

EDDY,  MRS.  She  is  a  good 
deal  more  of  a  poet  than  most 
of  her  readers  suspect.  I 
know  that  her  verses  are  de 
ficient  in  artistry  but  she  had 
a  wealth  of  poetical  ideas  and 
they  are  embodied  in  her  prose. 
60 

EGERIA.  It  was  Ford  who 
loved  her.  128 

EGERIA.  This  Howells  hero 
ine  ranks  with  me  right  after 
Marcia.  Egeria  is  one  of 
those  peculiarly  inscrutable 
New  England  types.  She  is 
not  as  overwhelming  as  Mar 
garet  Cooper  in  the  "Beau- 
champe"  of  W.  Gilmore 
Simms,  who  is,  by  all  odds,  the 
most  intense  heroine  in  Amer 
ican  fiction.  The  tale  of 
"Beauchampe"  is  not  as  great 
as  the  heroine  but  in  the  case 
of  Egeria,  the  heroine  and  her 
story  are  equally  great.  46 

EGOIST,  THE.  That  novel  is 
great  but  less  great  than  the 
"Rise  of  Silas  Lapham."  147 


ELEANOR  HARDING.  Her 
plan  to  meet  Bold.  173 

ELIZABETH,  AGE  OF.  It  has 
passed  away  and  we  fail  to 
remember  that.  21 

ELIZABETH  OF  HUNGARY,  ST. 
I  am  afraid  I  don't  know  as 
much  about  her  as  my  allusion 
implies.  60 

EMILY.  I  refer  to  the  hero 
ine  of  "The  Mysteries  of  Udol- 
pho,"  the  young  lady  who  read 
such  quantities  of  Ariosto  and 
Tasso  and  swooned  in  the  arms 
of  this  man  and  that.  You 
may  laugh  at  her  but  I  never 
get  out  of  touch  with  Emily. 
I  offer  no  apology  for  insert 
ing  in  this  place  an  old  wood 
cut  of  the  young  lady  from 
an  edition  of  "The  Mysteries 
of  Udolpho"  brought  out  early 
in  the  last  century.  And  this 
is  the  terrible  romanticism 
against  which  Howells  pro 
tests  ! 

ENGLAND.  It  has  heard  of 
Howells.  24 

ENGLAND.  Remarkable  fact 
that  she  makes  American  opin 
ion  on  all  topics  related  to 
literature  and  even  the  arts 
and  sciences.  9 

ENGLISH,  THE.  How  they 
love  us !  Howells  saw  through 
them  and  his  opinion  is  given. 
12 


243 


William  Dean  Howells 


ENGLISH,  THE.  Their  great 
est  artists  unknown  to  them 
selves  until  the  foreigner 
points  them  out.  10 

ENGLISH.  Their  mind  a  sec 
ond  rate  one.  3 

ENGLISHMAN,  IMPORTANT 
YOUNG.  This  is  an  old  game 
in  literature,  worked  again 
and  again  upon  the  American 
reading  public.  22 

EPIGRAM.    One     encounters 


it     rarely     in     Howells.    113 

ETIQUETTE.  "The  Rise  of 
Silas  Lapham"  is  a  manual  of 
that  polite  mystery.  211 

EURIPIDES.  He  has  a  touch 
of  Howells.  143 

EURIPIDES.  We  all  steal 
from  him.  100 

EVANSES.  They  were  not 
the  right  kind.  117 

FABRE,  HENRI.    He  suggests 


EMILY  IN  THE  CASTLE  OF  UDOLPHO 

"Does  anyone  now  read  Mrs.  Radcliffe,"  asks  Andrew 
Lang,  "or  am  I  the  only  wanderer  in  her  windy  corridors, 
listening  timidly  to  groans  and  hollow  voices,  and  shielding 
the  flame  of  a  lamp  which,  I  fear,  will  presently  flicker  out 
and  leave  me  in  the  darkness?" 


244 


Index 


the  manner  of  Howells  al 
though  he  dealt  with  insects 
and  Howells  does  not — in  the 
dictionary  sense.  Yet  the 
character  studies  of  Howells 
make  one  thing  of  the  Fabre 
studies  of  grasshoppers, 
beetles,  and  all  those  things. 
46 

FAMILY.  The  cult  of  the 
family  is  the  thing  Howells 
takes  over  from  the  Victor 
ians.  112 

FENTON,  LIEUTENANT.  His 
way  of  love.  141 

FILLMORE,  PRESIDENT.  A  re 
spectable  character.  165 

FLAUBERT.  He  can  be  set 
too  high.  110 

FLAUBERT.  His  art  is  less 
finished  than  that  of  "The  Rise 
of  Silas  Lapham."  147 

FREEDOM  OF  SPEECH.  Hos 
tility  of  Americans  to.  92 

GENIUS.  Our  women  seem 
to  have  more  of  it  than  our 
men  but  our  women  are  not  so 
exclusively  Anglo-Saxon.  61 

GENIUS.  That  of  a  woman 
is  not  like  that  of  a  man.  60 

GENIUS.  The  Briton  with 
none.  22 

GENIUS.  The  possession  of 
it  makes  a  man  a  grotesque 
character  in  the  Howells 
world.  84 


GEORGE  ELIOT.  Is  she  great 
er  than  Dickens?  185 

GEORGE  ELIOT.  She  had  a 
conscience,  it  seems.  99 

GEORGE  ELIOT.  She  is  un 
true  to  life  in  dealing  with  her 
heroes.  79 

GEORGE  ELIOT.  She  is  very 
good,  especially  in  "Adam 
Bede,"  but  she  can  not  hold 
a  candle  to  Howells.  27 

GEORGE  ELIOT.  She  went  to 
live  with  George  Henry  Lewes. 
If  it  had  not  all  happened  so 
long  ago  it  would  be  a  scan 
dal,  wouldn't  it?  99 

GEORGIAN.  The  period  com 
prehended  under  that  term  is 
another  excuse  for  a  super 
stition  in  our  own  unfortunate 
country.  21 

GERFAUT.  "Once  at  least, 
however,  in  'Gerfaut,'  Charles 
de  Bernard  seems  to  have  felt 
the  impulse  to  grasp  a  sub 
ject  nearer  its  roots,"  says 
Henry  James.  "In  spite  of  a 
number  of  signs  of  immatur 
ity,  this  is  his  solidest  and 
most  effective  work.  His  tales 
are  usually  comedies;  this  is 
a  tragedy.  The  reader  cares 
little  for  his  hero,  who  is  a 
gentleman  of  a  type  excessive 
ly  familiar  in  French  litera 
ture — a  distinguished  man  of 
letters,  of  restless  imagination, 


245 


William  Dean  Howells 


who  comes  down  to  the 
Chateau  de  Bergenheim  for 
the  express  purpose  of  seduc 
ing  its  pretty  mistress,  and 
who,  when  installed  among  its 
comforts,  and  smothered  in 
hospitality  by  the  husband, 
proceeds  in  the  most  scientific 
manner  to  bombard  the  af 
fections  of  the  wife.  Nor  are 
we  much  more  interested  in 
Madame  de  Bergenheim  her 
self,  who  surrenders  after  a 
barely  nominal  siege  and  with 
out  having  at  all  convinced  us 
that  her  affections  are  worth 
possessing.  But  the  book,  in 
spite  of  a  diffuseness  of  which 
afterward  the  author  was 
rarely  guilty,  is  written  with 
infinite  spirit  and  point,  and 
some  of  the  subordinate  fig 
ures  are  forcibly  and  wittily 
sketched."  It  is  a  great  book 
as  a  specimen  of  the  Balzac 
school,  and  that  is  all.  205 

GERMAN  HISTORIANS.  I 
don't  know  that  my  impres 
sions  of  them  are  very  ac 
curate.  39 

GHOST.  This  character  is 
responsible,  I  fancy,  for  the 
comparative  neglect  of 
Shakespeare  by  Howells.  171 

GIBBON,  EDWARD.  His  his 
tory  is  very  absorbing.  I  de 
voted  days  and  days  to  its  per 


usal  and  my  interest  never 
flagged.  I  might  have  said 
this  in  a  note  after  the  pon 
derous  British  fashion.  40 

GOD.  His  alleged  respon 
sibility  for  the  fact  that  the 
English  are  better  writers 
than  the  Americans.  4 

GOLDSMITH,  OLIVER.  His 
genius  and  that  of  Howells  are 
surprisingly  alike.  153 

GORIOT.  His  bedside  halts 
me.  147 

GOSPEL,  THE  HOWELLS.  He 
sums  it  up  himself.  171 

GRACE  BREEN.  How  she 
looked  at  a  crisis.  201 

HAMLET.  Style  a  reason 
for  the  popularity  of  Hamlet 
as  a  closet  play.  107 

HAMLET.  The  ghost  in  that 
play  disliked.  171 

HAMLET.  The  real  lesson 
of  that  great  play.  Howells 
says  something  about  Hamlet 
so  good  that  I  must  drag  it  in 
somehow:  "The  strongest 
reason  against  any  woman 
Hamlet  is  that  it  does  violence 
to  an  ideal.  Literature  is  not 
so  rich  in  great  imaginary 
masculine  types  that  we  can 
afford  to  have  them  trans 
formed  to  women;  and  after 
seeing  Mme.  Bernhardt's 
Hamlet  no  one  can  altogether 


246 


Index 


liberate  himself  from  the 
fancy  that  the  Prince  of  Den 
mark  was  a  girl  of  uncertain 
age,  with  crises  of  mannish- 
ness  in  which  she  did  not  seem 
quite  a  lady.  Hamlet  is  in 
nothing  more  a  man  than  in 
the  things  to  which  as  a  man 
he  found  himself  unequal;  for 
as  a  woman  he  would  have 
been  easily  superior  to  them." 
215 

HARVARD.  That  noble  in 
stitution  is  incidentally  men 
tioned.  I  might  add  here  that 
it  is  the  bulwark  of  the  super 
stition  against  which  this  study 
is  a  protest.  1 

HEINE,  HEINRICH.  A  pro 
found  remark  of  his.  67 

HEINE.  Howells  must  love 
him.  He  brings  him  into  "A 
Hazard  of  New  Fortunes"  but 
I  have  had  no  space  to  do  more 
than  name  the  man.  56 

HELEN  HARKNESS.  A  model 
of  inefficiency  and  hence  very 
American.  121 

HELEN  HARKNESS.  Her  dis 
cussion  of  democracy.  165 

HELEN  HARKNESS.  She 
knew  only  the  best  people. 
117 

HELEN  HARKNESS.  Tire 
someness  as  her  trait.  123 

"HELLO,  MIKE!"  I  think 
the  illustration  afforded  me 


by  the  salutation  is  felicitous. 
36 

HERO  AND  LEANDER.  How 
they  crop  up  or  rather  how 
their  sad  fate  suggests  itself 
whenever  one's  theme  is  love. 
46 

HERO,  THE.  Woman's  wor 
ship  of  him.  135 

HISTORIANS.  A  comparison 
of  their  equipment  with  that 
of  the  novelists.  38 

HOKUSAI.  The  great  Japa 
nese  artist  is  not  appreciated 
by  his  country's  aristocracy, 
but  who  is  ?  I  don't  mean  that 
I  know  much  about  Japanese 
color  prints.  25 

HOMER.  He  has  to  be 
brought  in,  too,  like  Poe.  I 
think  the  reference  to  him  ap 
propriate  in  the  circumstances. 
15 

HOMER.  He  was  blind.  So 
is  Howells,  to  some  things. 
232 

HOTTENTOT.  A.  What  he 
suggests  intellectually.  8 

HOWELLS,  W.  D.  He  intro 
duces  himself  into  one  of  his 
novels.  176 

HOWELLS.  WILLIAM  DEAN. 
I  have  purposely  refrained 
from  anything  in  the  nature 
of  a  biographical  study  of  the 
man's  life.  I  have  not  set  out 
to  emulate  Doctor  Dryasdust. 


247 


William  Dean  Howells 


I  have  an  idea,  of  course,  that 
Howells  was  born  in  Ohio,  that 
his  father  was  an  editor.  I 
have  gathered  that  Howells  set 
type  for  a  living  or  at  any 
rate  worked  at  the  case — as  it 
would  have  been  called  then. 
He  drifted  from  newspaper 
work  into  literature.  Now 
mark.  He  never  went  to  col 
lege.  That  is  why  he  never 
fell  under  the  spell  of  the 
British  literary  superstition. 
Had  he  gone  to  college  he 
would  have  lost  all  capacity  to 
use  that  wonderful  style  of 
his.  He  toiled  as  a  novelist  in 
Boston  and  he  won  for  him 
self  a  position  that  Balzac 
might  have  envied.  In  an  evil 
hour  Howells  came  down  to 
New  York.  He  went  to  work 
for  the  house  of  Harper.  God 
forbid  that  I  should  say  an  ill 
natured  thing,  but  what  can 
have  induced  Howells  to  enter 
the  pay  of  the  Harpers  ?  Was 
it  money?  I  suppose  so. 
,Well,  that  house  of  Harper 
put  the  blight  of  its  own  liter 
ary  superstitions — all  British 
— upon  Howells  and  to  that 
extent  it  ruined  the  author.  It 
paid  the  man  well.  This  is  the 
life  history  of  Howells  as  I 
read  it.  What  occasion  was 
there  to  spread  it  in  indignant 

248 


prose  from  one  chapter  to  an 
other?  Some  day  I  shall  sit 
down  to  write  the  life  of 
Howells,  I  suppose.  In  the 
meantime  I  suggest  that  my 
reader  go  over  again  that  last 
chapter — the  excuse  and  the 
occasion  of  this  volume.  200 

HOWELLS,  WILLIAM  DEAN. 
If  this  index  were  compiled  in 
the  heavy,  dull,  preposterous 
British  fashion,  I  suppose  I 
would  have  a  column  or  two 
under  this  heading  with  a  for 
est  of  figures  and  the  effect 
would  be  insufferably  dull  to  a 
general  reader.  As  I  have 
hinted,  I  want  this  to  be  a 
readable  and  lively  index.  Let 
me  say  that  the  book  in  your 
hands  is  on  the  subject  of 
Howells.  If  you  want  to  find 
out  some  detail  look  under  the 
appropriate  heading  and  if 
you  fail  to  find  it,  I  can  only 
say  that  I  am  sorry.  1 

HUBBARD,  BARTLEY.  He  is  a 
wretched  newspaper  man  and 
he  amounts  to  nothing.  127 

HUBBARD,  BARTLEY.  The 
lamp  Marcia  carried  lights  him 
up.  73 

HUMOR.  The  sense  in  woman 
is  revealed  by  Howells  as  by 
no  other  writer  except  Jane 
Austen.  71 

IDEAS.     Inadequacy   of   the 


Index 


native  American  head  to  any 
thing  of  the  sort.  156 

IDEAS.  Never  put  them  into 
a  woman's  head.  142 

IDEAS.  The  hostility  of  the 
Howells  world  to  these  is  re 
markable  and  American.  84 

IMPORTANT  YOUNG  ENGLISH 
MAN.  He  bobs  up.  He  is  the 
oldest  trick  in  the  publisher's 
box.  22 

INDIAN  SUMMER.  Middle 
age  is  its  theme.  137 

INDIAN  SUMMER.  The  fair 
young  lady  in  this  book  is  not 
to  be  blamed  for  falling  in  love 
with  a  middle  aged  man.  To 
tell  the  truth  the  love  of  a 
young  girl  for  a  middle  aged 
man  ought  to  be  encouraged — 
that  is,  if  the  middle  aged  man 
be  single  or  a  widower.  50 

IRENE  LAPHAM.  Consider 
her  fate.  136 

IRENE  LAPHAM.  "She  was 
a  very  pretty  figure  of  a  girl, 
after  our  fashion  of  girls, 
round  and  slim  and  flexible, 
and  her  face  was  admirably 
regular.  But  her  great  beauty 
— and  it  was  very  great — was 
in  her  coloring.  This  was  of 
an  effect  for  which  there  is  no 
word  but  delicious,  as  we  use 
it  of  fruit  or  flowers.  She 
had  red  hair,  like  her  father  in 
his  earlier  days,  and  the  tints 


of  her  cheeks  and  temples  were 
such  as  suggested  May-flow 
ers  and  apple-blossoms  and 
peaches.  Instead  of  the  gray 
that  often  dulls  this  complex 
ion,  her  eyes  were  of  a  blue 
at  once  intense  and  tender,  and 
they  seemed  to  burn  on  what 
they  looked  at  with  a  soft, 
lambent  flame."  Her  beauty 
distracts  us  all.  150 

IRENE  LAPHAM.  Her  entry 
into  her  sister's  room.  146 

IRENE  LAPHAM.  Her  style 
and  her  dress.  182 

JAMESON,  MRS.  One  more 
woman  who  is  too  much  neg 
lected.  Let  me  set  down  here 
a  remark  of  hers  that  ought  to 
have  been  quoted  in  the  text: 
"Where  the  vivacity  of  the  in 
tellect  and  the  strength  of  the 
passions  exceed  the  develop 
ment  of  the  moral  faculties, 
the  character  is  likely  to  be 
imbittered  or  corrupted  by  ex 
tremes,  either  of  adversity  or 
prosperity.  This  is  especially 
the  case  with  women;  but  as 
far  as  my  own  observation  and 
experience  go,  I  should  say 
that  many  more  women  have 
their  heads  turned  by  pros 
perity  than  their  hearts  spoiled 
by  adversity;  and,  in  general, 
the  female  character  rises  with 


249 


William  Dean  Howells 


the  pressure  of  ill  fortune." 
Mrs.  Jameson  knew  her  sex 
wonderfully  well.  60 

JESUS.  He  won  the  love  of 
more  women  than  Don  Juan 
ever  did.  134 

JESUS.  One  effect  of  the 
study  of  his  gospel.  172 

JEWETT,  SARAH  ORNE.  I 
don't  give  a  fig  for  her  but 
Howells  seems  to  think  her 
great.  171 

JOAN  OF  ARC.  She  seems  to 
have  known  as  much  about 
military  science  as  a  member 
of  the  general  staff.  How 
ever,  she  was  inspired  and 
military  commanders  are  not, 
as  a  rule.  60 

JOHN  BOLD.  He  is  a  char 
acter  in  Trollope's  "Warden" 
and  he  is  brought  in  for  good 
reasons.  173 

JULIET.  Shakespeare's,  of 
course.  72 

KEATS,  JOHN.     109 

KENTON.  Miss.  This  How 
ells  young  lady  illustrates  an 
other  remark  of  Mrs.  Jame 
son's:  "O  me!  how  many 
women  since  the  days  of  Echo 
and  Narcissus,  have  pined 
themselves  into  air  for  the  love 
of  men  who  were  in  love  only 
with  themselves!"  The  affair 
of  Miss  Kenton  proves  it.  66 

250 


KENTONS,  THE.  This  novel 
is  a  marvel  of  effective  dia 
logue.  113. 

KIPLING,  RUDYARD.  I  sup 
pose  his  vogue  will  at  no  dis 
tant  day  inspire  the  wonder 
we  now  feel  at  the  vogue  of 
Southey  in  days  long  past  and 
gone.  27 

KORAN,  THE.  Poe's  para 
dise  in  Mahomet's.  222 

LADY.  The  type  in  Howells. 
112 

LADY  MACBETH.  The  in 
sight  of  Shakespeare  in  her 
case  ought  to  put  the  realists 
to  the  blush.  203 

LADY  NOVELISTS.  A  jibe  at 
them  all.  55 

LADY  OF  THE  AROOSTOOK, 
THE.  I  once  had  a  hot  dis 
pute  with  Frank  Harris  about 
this  novel.  I  believe  he  could 
not  read  it.  I  told  him  to  get 
"A  Modern  Instance,"  but 
Harris  never  told  me  what  he 
thought  of  it.  I  defend  "The 
Lady  of  the  Aroostook"  as  per 
fect.  47 

LADY  OF  THE  AROOSTOOK, 
THE.  It  has  a  moral.  136 

LAPHAM.  The  girls  of  the 
family.  143 

LAPHAM.  The  sisters  of 
this  famous  family  are  beauti 
fully  delineated.  181 


Index 


LEATHERWOOD  GOD,  THE.  A 
remarkable  exhibition  of 
power  as  a  novel,  but  I  must 
confess  that  it  deals  with  its 
theme  in  a  way  I  am  not  very 
much  disposed  to  like.  200 

LEMUEL  BARKER.  The  tragic 
position  of  this  real  poet  whose 
genius  was  not  suspected  by 
his  creator,  Howells,  appeals 
to  me.  96 

LIBBY,  MR.  He  is  the  repre 
sentative  Howells  young  man, 
a  specimen  of  the  breed  to 
which  young  Corey  belongs. 
81 

LIBERTY.  Americans  dis 
trust  it.  162 

LIES.  Never  tell  them  to  a 
woman.  She  will  tell  them  to 
you  by  the  score,  of  course. 
139 

LIFE.  A  dissertation  upon 
living  it.  57 

LIFE.  It  is  too  large  for 
our  formulas.  Howells  has 
never  learned  this.  172 

LIFE.  It  must  be  deemed  a 
curtain  behind  which  the 
school  of  Howells  never  gets. 
208 

LILY  MAYHEW.  She  knew 
what  love  was,  at  any  rate. 
The  observation  can  be  made 
with  impunity  of  any  Howells 
heroine. .  66 
LITERARY  MEN.  They  ape 


the.  English  and  they  arc 
deemed  ridiculous,  absurd, 
preposterous,  a  joke.  23 

LITERATURE.  It  is  the  sub 
ject  of  much  flubdub,  flimflam 
and  flapdoodle.  17 

LITERATURE.  Its  accidental 
relation  to  editorial  policy. 
194 

LITERATURE.  The  big  word 
made  ridiculous  by  the  Eng-> 
lish.  3 

LITERATURE  AND  LIFE.  An 
exhibition  of  noble  powers 
misapplied.  231 

LITERATURE  AND  LIFE.  The 
name  of  the  book  in  which 
Howells  reveals  his  incapacity 
as  a  critic  in  the  most  complete 
fashion.  195 

LONDON.  Its  pontifically 
final  attitude  to  ourselves  in 
literature.  20 

LOVE.  Never  is  it  ridicu 
lous  in  Howells,  keen  as  is  his 
humor  in  dealing  with  the 
theme.  108 

LOVE.  Woman  and  her  atti 
tude  to  it.  132 

LOVE.  Woman  is  never 
afraid  of  that.  138 

LUCULLUS,  DINING  WITH. 
The  allusion  is  hardly  worth 
the  trouble  of  an  entry  but  I 
make  it  the  basis  of  a  fresh 
protest  against  the  wooden 
fashion  of  indexing  every 


251 


William  Dean  Howells 

proper  name  and  running  a      charm  in  the  form  of  her  up- 


figure  after  it.  The  publish 
ers  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  the 
indexes  to  their  books.  15 

LYDIA  BLOOD.  She  is  the 
young  lady  who  takes  that 
famous  voyage  in  the  Aroos- 
took.  I  don't  know  why  she 
fascinates  me  so.  47 

LYDIA  GWILT.  She  is  the 
heroine  of  Wilkie  Collins's 
novel  of  "Armadale."  212 

MAGAZINES.  Ours  have  done 
more  for  British  novelists  than 
they  have  done  for  American 
novelists.  194 

MAINE.  This  state  was  very 
well  known  to  Howells  and  I 
like  to  dwell  upon  his  treat 
ment  of  its  scenes  and  its  peo 
ple.  33 

MANNERS.  Ours  are  studied 
effectively.  115 

MAHCIA.  Howells  does  gloat 
over  her  physical  aspect.  "She 
thus  showed  a  smooth,  low 
forehead,  lips  and  cheeks 
deeply  red,  a  softly  rounded 
chin  touched  with  a  faint  dim 
ple,  and  in  turn  a  nose  short 
and  aquiline;  her  eyes  were 
dark,  and  her  dusky  hair 
flowed  crinkling  above  her  fine 
black  brows,  and  vanished 
down  the  curve  of  a  lovely 
neck.  There  was  a  peculiar 


per  lip:  it  was  exquisitely 
arched,  and  at  the  corners  it 
projected  a  little  over  the 
lower  lip,  so  that  when  she 
smiled  it  gave  a  piquant  sweet 
ness  to  her  mouth,  with  a  cer 
tain  demure  innocence  that 
qualified  the  Roman  pride  of 
her  profile.  For  the  rest,  her 
beauty  was  of  the  kind  that 
coming  years  would  only  ripen 
and  enrich;  at  thirty  she 
would  be  even  handsomer  than 
at  twenty,  and  be  all  the  more 
southern  in  her  type  for  the 
paling  of  that  northern  color 
in  her  cheeks."  72 

MARCIA.  If  I  could  only  do 
justice  to  her!  69 

MARCIA.  She  can  not  be 
delineated  by  a  second  rate 
novelist.  74 

MAHCIA.  She  is  mentioned 
here  in  a  running  fashion,  in 
conjunction  with  other  How 
ells  characters.  In  Marcia, 
too,  I  detect  a  resemblance  to 
the  Margaret  Cooper  of  W. 
Gilmore  Simms.  To  me  the 
effect  of  intensity  in  the  char 
acter  of  Margaret  Cooper  and 
the  effect  of  intensity  in  the 
character  of  Marcia  Hubbard 
are  suggestive,  stimulating. 
Is  intensity  the  American 
feminine  note?  49 


252 


Index 


MARCIA.    She  is  New  Eng-         MEREDITH,    GEORGE.       Dia- 


land  to  the  backbone.    72 

MARK  TWAIN.    He  made  a 
very  just  remark  on  the  sub- 
<    ject  of  the  technique  of  How- 
ells.    48 

MARRYAT,  CAPTAIN.  I  read 
him  with  much  interest  when 
I  was  a  boy.  He  never  wrote 
a  tale  of  the  sea  that  can  com 
pare  with  Moby  Dick — but 
Moby  Dick  was  written  by  an 
American  and  hence  we  can't 
rate  it  at  its  true  value.  48 
MARY  MAGDALEN.  The  fine 
genius  of  Howells  is  symbol 
ized  by  her  spiritualization. 
110 

MASCULINE.  The  failure  of 
our  genius  to  grasp  the  signifi 
cance  of  the  term.  183 

MASTERPIECE.  The  word  is 
applicable  to  "The  Rise  of 
Silas  Lapham"  which  contains 
the  most  tremendous  episode 
in  fiction.  145 

MAUPASSANT,  GUY  DE.  What 
English  writer  of  tales  can  ap 
proach  him?  7 

MAYFLOWER.  What  a  tribe 
came  over  in  it.  123 

MAYNARD,  MRS.  She  is 
sketched  with  perfect  knowl 
edge  of  the  type  of  women  to 
which  she  belongs.  81 

MENDELISM.  Significant  re 
mark  upon.  7 


logue  as  he  uses  it  compared 
with  that  of  Howells  again. 
71 

MEREDITH,  GEORGE.  His  in 
feriority  to  Howells  in  some 
points.  71 

MEREDITH,  GEORGE.  His  in 
feriority  to  Howells  is  not  dis 
cerned  because  Meredith  is 
English  and  Howells  is  an 
American.  151 

MEREDITH,  GEORGE.  That 
swimming  scene  of  his.  145 

METHODIST.  His  idea  of 
criticism.  190 

MEXICO.  The  allusion  is  to 
the  famous  work  of  Prescott. 
39 

MIDDLE  CLASS  ENGLISHMAN. 
That  is  the  ideal  for  which  the 
American  republic  stands. 
89 

MILTON,  JOHN.  Since  this 
is  an  index,  I  must  at  least  set 
down  his  name.  57 

MISSISSIPPI.  That  sublime 
river  is  mentioned  by  way  of 
illustration.  In  the  average 
index  the  name  would  be  set 
down  and  a  number  would  fol 
low  it.  This  is  too  absurd. 
Such  are  the  consequences  of 
following  a  British  literary  ex 
ample.  1 

MONTAGUE.  This  is  a  fa 
mous  name  and  its  appearance 


253 


William  Dean  Howells 


in  the  circumstances  is  inevit 
able.  149 

MONTONI.  Let  me  explain 
for  the  benefit  of  the  young 
that  he  is  the  heavy  villain  in 
"The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho." 
I  admire  him  immensely. 
"This  Signor  Montoni  had  an 
air  of  conscious  superiority, 
animated  by  spirit  and 
strengthened  by  talents,  to 
which  every  person  seemed  in 
voluntarily  to  yield.  The 
quickness  of  his  perceptions 
was  strikingly  expressed  on 
his  countenance ;  yet  that  coun 
tenance  could  submit  implic 
itly  to  occasion ;  and  more  than 
once  in  this  day  the  triumph 
of  art  over  nature  might  have 
been  discerned  in  it.  His  vis 
age  was  long,  and  rather  nar 
row,  yet  he  was  called  hand 
some  ;  and  it  was,  perhaps,  the 
spirit  and  vigor  of  his  soul, 
sparkling  through  his  features, 
that  triumphed  for  him." 
73 

MOON,  THE.  Poe  makes  the 
satellite  guilty.  222 

MULBHIDGE,  DOCTOR.  He 
wasn't  a  gentleman  in  the 
Howells  sense  and  that  had  its 
consequences.  83 

MUSSET,  ALFRED  DE.  His 
name  occurs  to  one,  naturally, 


in  talking  of  the  thing  called 
morality.  56 

MY  LITERARY  PASSIONS.  A 
dig  at  the  dunces  in.  9 

MY  LITERARY  PASSIONS. 
Read  it  with  caution.  205 

NATIVE  AMERICAN.  Poverty 
of  his  mind  when  he  is  of 
Anglo-Saxon  origin.  203 

NELSON,  HORATIO.  His  posi 
tion  as  a  lover.  139 

NEMESIS.  We  all  have  one 
and  that  is  the  one  referred  to. 
71 

NEW  ENGLAND.  Its  inter 
preter  in  literature  is  the  only 
Howells.  82 

NEWSPAPER.  Its  relation  to 
American  literature  is  dis 
cussed  with  some  candor  but 
the  matter  will  be  found  crop 
ping  up  here  and  there  as  the 
pages  are  turned.  19 

NEW  YORK.  I  wonder  if 
Howells  ever  knew  it.  212 

NILE.  I  am  surprised  to 
find  that  I  have  mentioned  it 
but  casually  and  only  once. 
139 

NOVEL.  It  deteriorates  in 
the  British  Isles.  169 

NOVEL,  GREAT  AMERICAN.  I 
really  have  said  nothing  about 
it  but  I  wish  to  note  a  passing 
reference.  24 


254 


Index 


OBSCENITY.  This  quality  in 
Poe  deserves  careful  study, 
which  I  attempt.  224 

O'FLAHERTY,    Is    THIS    MR.? 

A  whole  life's  experience  is 
compressed  in  the  paragraph 
devoted  to  the  query.  36 

ORLANDO.  This  creation  of 
Ariosto's  is  not  too  preposter 
ous  to  reflect  life.  170 

OVERALLS.  A  youth  who 
once  worked  in  them  has  a 
terrible  time.  86 

PASSION.  What  it  signifies 
and  implies.  173 

PAUL.  His  observation  on 
the  great  passion.  172 

PECK,  HARRY  THURSTON.  It 
has  always  seemed  to  me  that 
he  got  very  shabby  treatment. 
His  book  on  Prescott  is  re 
markable.  40 

PENELOPE  LAPHAM.  "She 
was  named  after  her  grand 
mother,  who  had  in  her  turn 
inherited  from  another  ances 
tress  the  name  of  the  Homeric 
matron  whose  peculiar  merits 
won  her  a  place  even  among 
the  Puritan  Faiths,  Hopes, 
Temperances,  and  Prudences. 
Penelope  was  the  girl  whose 
odd  serious  face  had  struck 
Bartley  Hubbard  in  the  photo 
graph  of  the  family  group 
Lapham  showed  him  on  the 


day  of  the  interview.  Her 
large  eyes,  like  her  hair,  were 
brown;  they  had  the  peculiar 
look  of  near-sighted  eyes  which 
is  called  mooning;  her  com 
plexion  was  of  a  dark  pallor." 
She  was  the  one  Corey  loved. 
146 

PENELOPE  LAPHAM.  The 
amazing  amount  of  reading 
done  by  this  young  woman. 
182 

PERICLES  AND  ASPASIA. 
They  would  have  enjoyed 
"The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham." 
152 

PHILISTINISM.  Defiance  of 
it  comes  from  London.  61 

PHILISTINISM.  Its  unblush 
ing  and  unconscious  character 
in  Howells.  109 

PHILISTINISM.  There  is  a 
braying  kind  as  well  as  a 
sneering  kind.  20 

PHILISTINISMS.  We  get 
ours  from  the  English,  there 
being  no  one  else  to  get  any 
from.  15 

PLOT.  A  historian  needs  it 
just  as  if  he  were  a  novelist. 
39 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  Why 
America  could  not  assimilate 
the  poor  fellow.  90 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  Conde 
scension  of  Dickens  to.  4 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.    Folly 


255 


William  Dean  Howells 


of  belittling  him.  Henry 
James  can  actually  say: 
"With  all  due  respect  to  the 
very  original  genius  of  the  au 
thor  of  the  'Tales  of  Mystery/ 
it  seems  to  us  that  to  take  him 
with  more  than  a  certain  de 
gree  of  seriousness  is  to  lack 
seriousness  one's  self.  An  en 
thusiasm  for  Poe  is  the  mark 
of  a  decidedly  primitive  stage 
of  reflection."  But  Saints- 
bury  says :  "Whoso  thinks  lit 
tle  of  Poe,  let  him  suspect  that 
he  knows  about  as  little  of 
poetry,  and,  therefore,  for  fear 
of  accidents,  had  better  say 
nothing  about  it."  216 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  He 
says  the  passions  should  be 
held  in  reverence.  172 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  He, 
too,  revolted  from  the  British 
literary  superstition.  167 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  His 
contempt  for  epics  is  a  source 
of  regret  to  me.  15 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  His 
whole  work  dismissed  as  be 
neath  contempt  in  a  London 
organ  of  imbecility  in  litera 
ture.  9 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  Imbe 
cility  of  Howells  in  dismissing 
so  great  a  writer  as  an  in 
competent  critic.  206 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.    Inferi 


ority  of  every  English  writer 
of  tales  to  that  great  genius. 
6 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  Is  it 
possible  to  write  on  the  topic 
of  literature  in  general  with 
out  referring  to  him  con 
stantly?  Certainly,  I  have  had 
occasion  to  mention  him  again 
and  again  because  the  glory 
of  his  genius  sheds  a  glow 
upon  whatever  page  his  name 
adorns.  12 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  I  sug 
gest  an  explanation  of  the  hos 
tility  of  Howells  to  this 
genius.  219 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  I  try 
to  compare  him  with  Words 
worth — a  difficult  as  well  as  a 
bold  undertaking.  57 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  The 
astonishing  thing  about  him. 
57 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  The 
fact  that  he  was  discovered  by 
the  French  explains  his  fame 
in  his  own  country.  He  was 
not  discovered  by  the  English. 
26 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  What 
if  he  couldn't  find  a  publisher 
nowadays?  11 

POLK,  PRESIDENT.  His  re 
spectability.  165 

POOR,  THE.  They  are  re 
publican  although  the  rich 


256 


Index 


Americans  are  monarchical. 
126 

POPE,  ALEXANDER.  He  has 
come  back.  198 

POVERTY.  An  object  of 
ridicule  to  Howells  and  his  en 
tire  sissy  school.  210 

PRESCOTT,  W.  H.  I  see  the 
"modern"  historians  are  try 
ing  to  destroy  his  reputation. 
The  men  who  have  no  imagina 
tion  and  no  fancy  always  re 
venge  themselves  in  that  style 
upon  the  man  who  has.  40 

PRESCOTT,  W.  H.  Is  he  a 
historian?  115 

PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED 
STATES,  THE.  I  have  discussed 
no  constitutional  question — a 
passing  allusion,  that  is  all, 
and  I  suppose  I  might  have 
omitted  even  that.  35 

PSYCHOANALYSIS.  What 

Howells  says  of  some  literary 
themes  may  have  to  be  revised 
in  the  light  of  this  science.  I 
do  not  mean  to  speak  cock- 
surely.  I  am  not  an  authority 
on  the  subject.  There  are 
hints  in  the  science  that  upset 
the  dominant  school  in  our 
literature.  202 

PSYCHOLOGY.  It  throws  a 
new  light  upon  some  of  the 
points  raised  by  Howells. 
201 

PURITY.    The  effect  of  it  in 


women  as  conveyed  by  How 
ells.    63. 

QUACK.  His  rare  privileges 
in  the  United  States  when  he 
happens  to  be  English.  11 

QUALITY  OF  MERCY,  THE. 
This  is  one  of  the  interesting 
novels.  I  have  not  found  it 
necessary  to  take  every  book 
Howells  wrote  and  serve  it  up 
as  if  I  were  compiling  a  dic 
tionary  of  Howells.  I  am 
writing  a  running  commentary 
and  an  interpretation  in  the 
way  of  exemplifying  my  own 
views  of  literature.  (I  say 
this  here  instead  of  writing  a 
preface.)  200 

RADCLIFFE,  MRS.  ANNE.  I 
dislike  to  dismiss  a  novelist 
who  has  so  vastly  interested 
me  in  the  hasty  fashion  into 
which  I  was  driven  by  the  rush 
of  my  ideas.  How  I  wish 
some  of  the  preposterous  New 
York  publishers  would  bring 
out  a  complete  edition  of  her 
breathless  tales.  There  was  an 
English  writer  who  could  use 
the  language  as  if  it  were 
something  more  than  a  bucket 
of  water  to  be  emptied  upon 
the  head  of  each  theme  lifting 
itself  into  timeliness.  45 

RAINFORD,  LORD.    We  poor 


257 


William  Dean  Howells 


Americans  knock  him  over. 
127 

RASTIGNAC.  I  accompany 
him  into  the  boudoir  of 
Madame  de  Nucingen.  73 

RAVEN,  THE,  No  New 
York  editor  would  condescend 
to  bow  to  the  shabby  object 
who  wrote  it.  198 

READE,  CHARLES.  Howells 
gives  him  a  black  eye,  speaking 
metaphorically.  98 

REALISM.  His  praises  of  it 
and  his  censures  of  romanti 
cism.  153 

REALISM.  Howells  insists 
that  he  is  devoted  to  it.  I 
deny  that.  53 

REALISM.  It  is  with  How 
ells  simply  a  feminine  attitude 
to  life.  He  loves  the  ladies. 
184 

REALISM.  There  is  a  good 
reason  for  the  attitude  of 
Howells  to  that.  100 

REMBRANDT.  He  had  some 
thing  in  common  with  Howells. 
67 

REPRESSION.  The  Howells 
world  might  be  called  one  in 
which  this  prevails  and  is  prac 
ticed.  213 

RICHARDSON,  SAMUEL.  Oh! 
what  a  shame  it  is  that 
"Clarissa  Harlowe"  is  so  hard 
to  get  in  an  edition  a  poor  man 
can  buy  complete.  69 


RISE  OF  SILAS  LAPHAM,  THE. 
Its  superiority  as  a  national 
asset  to  the  whole  taxable 
value  of  the  city  of  New  York. 
2 

RISE  or  SILAS  LAPHAM, 
THE.  Just  a  word  about  it. 
49 

ROBINSON  CRUSOE.  I  can 
not  omit  mention  of  that  foot 
print  in  the  sand.  145 

ROMANTICISTIC.      To          show 

what  a  fool  Howells  can  be  on 
this  subject,  I  quote  from  his 
"Literature  and  Life,"  a  poor 
hodge-podge:  "There  is  also 
a  sentimentality,  or  pseudo- 
emotionality  (I  have  not  the 
right  phrase  for  it),  which 
awaits  full  recognition  in  fic 
tion.  This  efflorescence  from 
the  dust  of  systems  and  creeds, 
carried  into  natures  left  va 
cant  by  the  ancestral  doctrine, 
has  scarcely  been  noticed  by 
the  painters  of  New  England 
manners.  It  is  often  a  last 
state  of  Unitarianism,  which 
prevailed  in  the  larger  towns 
and  cities  when  the  Calvinistic 
theology  ceased  to  be  domi 
nant,  and  it  is  often  an  effect 
of  the  spiritualism  so  common 
in  New  England,  and,  in  fact, 
everywhere  in  America."  The 
word  "romanticistic"  is  How- 
ells'sown.  184 


258 


Index 


ROMANTICISTS.  They  are 
the  only  writers.  215 

ROMEO.  Having  mentioned 
Juliet,  I  insert  his  name.  72 

ROMEO  AND  JULIET.  The 
saturation  of  it  with  love  is 
like  the  saturation  of  "The 
Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  with 
love.  149 

RUSSIA.  Howells  has  raved 
over  her  literature.  178 

RUSSIAN  LITERATURE.  Its 
exploitation  by  the  New  York 
publisher  who  is  amazed  at  the 
gullibility  of  the  American 
public  on  the  subject.  22 

RUSSIANS.  Craze  of  the 
publishers.  22 

SCHOOL.  Such  a  school!  I 
refer  to  the  school  of  Howells 
with  its  Mary  Wilkins  Free- 
mans  and  its  Sarah  Orne  Jew- 
etts  and  its  other  ladies.  230 

SCOTT,  SIR  WALTER.  He  has 
no  heroine  as  great  as  Irene 
Lapham  or  as  Penelope  Lap- 
ham.  150 

SEX.  Denial  that  Poe  deals 
in  it  exposed  as  a  preposterous 
and  Anglo-Saxon  piece  of  stu 
pidity.  219 

SEX.  The  Howells  woman 
has  that.  65 

SHAKESPEAREAN  CRITICISM. 
The  English  have  none  they 
have  not  stolen.  7 


SHAKESPEARE,  WILLIAM.  A 
man  may  know  him  in  the 
textual  sense  and  yet  miss  his 
meaning.  186. 

SHAKESPEARE,  WILLIAM. 
He  has  his  heroines  but  I 
would  risk  those  of  Howells 
alongside  them  without  wink 
ing  an  eyelid.  72 

SHAKESPEARE,  WILLIAM.  I 
give  more  reasons  for  my  view 
that  Howells  is  like  him  in 
creating  heroines.  74 

SHAKESPEARE,  WILLIAM. 
Impertinence  of  the  contem 
porary  English  to.  25 

SHAKESPEARE,  WILLIAM. 
The  hostility  he  expresses  to 
democracy.  183 

SHAKESPEARE,  WILLIAM. 
The  only  important  English 
dramatist.  6 

SHAKESPEARE,  WLLLIAM. 
Women  he  knew,  but  Howells 
knows  them  just  as  well  as  he. 
143 

SHELLY,  PERCY  BYSSHE.  He 
fails  to  discern  the  spirituality 
of  Jesus.  184 

SHELLEY.  His  poetry  com 
pared  with  the  United  States 
government.  166 

SHORT  STORY,  THE.  Mis 
takes  of  Howells  are  incredi 
ble,  innumerable,  incorrigible, 
as  he  tries  to  tell  us  something 
about  them.  216 


259 


William  Dean  Howells 

SILAS    LAPHAM.    The    most      sey,  and  is  the  neighbor  of  Mr. 


successful  creation  of  any 
American  novelist.  154 

SISSIES.  Agony  lestttfe  sup 
ply  give  out.  197 

SISSIES.  Their  numbers  in 
the  editorial  offices  of  periodi 
cals  as  assistant  editors.  197 

SISSY.  The  word  is  not  de 
fined  in  the  average  dictionary. 
I  attempt  one.  179 

SISSY,  THE.  It  is  amazing 
to  observe  how  Howells  raves 
over  the  sissies.  For  instance: 
"At  Boston,  or  near  Boston, 
live  those  artists  supreme  in 
the  kind  of  short  story  which 
we  have  carried  so  far:  Miss 
Jewett,  Miss  Wilkins,  Miss 
Alice  Brown,  Mrs.  Chase- Wy- 
man,  and  Miss  Gertrude 
Smith,  who  comes  from  Kan 
sas,  and  writes  of  the  prairie 
farm-life,  though  she  leaves 
Mr.  E.  W.  Howe  (of  The 
Story  of  a  Country  Town  and 
presently  of  the  Atchison 
Daily  Globe)  to  constitute, 
with  the  humorous  poet  Iron- 
quill,  a  frontier  literary  center 
at  Topeka.  Of  Boston,  too, 
though  she  is  of  western  Penn 
sylvania  origin,  is  Mrs.  Mar 
garet  Deland,  one  of  our  most 
successful  novelists.  Miss 
Wilkins  has  married  out  of 
Massachusetts  into  New  Jer- 


H.  M.  Alden  at  Metuchen." 
And  so  on  and  so  forth! 
What  she  has  done  in  litera 
ture.  178 

SISSY  SCHOOL.  This  is  na 
tive  American  and  Anglo- 
Saxon  to  the  backbone.  194 

SLEEPER,  THE.  A  remark 
upon  this  greatest  of  the  poems 
of  Poe.  221 

SLOPE,  MR.  He  goes  around 
and  around  and  around.  145 

SLOPE,  MR.  He  is  a  very 
effective  character  in  "Bar- 
chester  Towers,"  by  Anthony 
Trollope.  The  shameless  and 
beautiful  lady  beside  whom  he 
sat  on  the  sofa  was  Charlotte 
Stanhope,  or  La  Signora  Mad 
eline  Vesey  Neroni:  "The 
beauty  of  her  face  was  unin 
jured,  and  that  beauty  was  of 
a  peculiar  kind.  Her  copious 
rich  brown  hair  was  worn  in 
Grecian  bandeaux  round  her 
head,  displaying  as  much  as 
possible  of  her  forehead  and 
cheeks.  Her  forehead,  though 
rather  low,  was  very  beautiful 
from  its  perfect  contour  and 
pearly  whiteness.  Her  eyes 
were  long  and  large,  and  mar- 
velously  bright;  might  I  ven 
ture  to  say,  bright  as  Lucifer's, 
I  should  perhaps  best  express 
the  depth  of  their  brilliancy. 


260 


Index 


They  were  dreadful  eyes  to 
look  at,  such  as  would  abso 
lutely  deter  any  man  of  quiet 
mind  and  easy  spirit  from  at 
tempting  a  passage  of  arms 
with  such  foes.  There  was 
talent  in  them,  and  the  fire  of 
passion  and  the  play  of  wit, 
but  there  was  no  love.  Cruelty 
was  there  instead,  and  cour 
age,  a  desire  of  masterhood, 
cunning,  and  a  wish  for  mis 
chief.  And  yet,  as  eyes,  they 
were  very  beautiful.  The  eye 
lashes  were  long  and  perfect, 
and  the  long  steady  unabashed 
gaze,  with  which  she  would 
look  into  the  face  of  her  ad 
mirer,  fascinated  while  it 
frightened  him.  She  was  a 
basilisk  from  whom  an  ardent 
lover  of  beauty  could  make  no 
escape.  Her  nose  and  mouth 
and  teeth  and  chin  and  neck 
and  bust  were  perfect,  much 
more  so  at  twenty-eight  than 
they  had  been  at  eighteen." 
Altogether  a  remarkable  char 
acter  to  run  across  in  a  novel. 
And  the  things  she  did !  76 

STANDARDS.  Absurdity  of 
the  English  in  talking  about 
such  things  at  all  and  their 
crass  ignorance  on  the  whole 
subject.  5 

STANDARDS.  Have  we  poor 
Americans  any?  8 


STANDARDS.  The  man's  and 
the  woman's.  This  is  so  large 
a  theme  that  I  might  have 
handled  it  more  elaborately.  I 
fancy,  however,  that  my  read 
ers  know  more  of  it  than  I 
do  myself.  56 

STYLE.  In  narrative  the 
thing  is  the  creation  of  How- 
ells  and  we  are  all  his  follow 
ers.  209 

STEDMAN,  E.  C.  He  makes 
a  mad  remark  about  Poe.  220 

S'TIRA  DUDLEY.  Her  effort 
to  get  into  the  box  factory  and 
her  fashion*  130 

STRUCTURE.  Importance  of 
this  characteristic  of  a  How- 
ells  novel.  109 

STYLE.  It  is  an  instrument 
upon  which  Howells  plays  as 
if  it  were  a  piano  and  he  were 
Paderewski.  53 

STYLE.  There  is  a  good  rea 
son  for  the  chatter  about  it 
and  its  mysteries.  100 

STYLE.  The  secret  of  it  is 
never  known.  106 

STYLE.  What  an  inexhaust 
ible  theme!  In  the  slang  of 
the  hour,  "Good  Night !"  Yet 
what  a  fascinating  theme  is 
this  one  of  style !  I  deal  with 
it  from  the  standpoint  of  inti 
macy.  36 

SUBTLETY.  What  is  it?  I 
think  the  quality  is  not  appre- 


261 


William  Dean  Howells 


dated  by  critics  of  literature 
as  it  should  be.  44 

SYBIL.  Of  course,  she  has  to 
be  mentioned,  at  least.  No 
discussion  of  any  topic  is  com 
plete  without  her.  60 

SYBIL.  This  is  the  young 
lady  in  "The  Minister's 
Charge,"  not  the  divinity  in 
the  Latin  world.  127 

SYKTHESIS.  Howells  is  like 
a  German  chemist  in  that  de 
partment  of  his  art.  "The 
Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  proves 
the  proposition.  54 


TARQUIN.  The  delights  of 
this  ravisher.  223 

TECHNIQUE.  That  of  How 
ells  is  carefully  analyzed.  I 
would  advise  the  reader  not  to 
skip  it.  38 

TEXAS.  The  ranch  young 
Corey  stayed  at  was  there  and 
this  is  an  index.  146 

THACKERAY,  W.  M.  He  is 
by  no  means  as  great  a  literary 
artist  as  Howells.  27 

THACKERAY,  W.  M.  Inti 
mate?  Yes.  But  think  of  the 
intimacy  of  Howells.  34 

THEIR  WEDDING  JOURNEY. 
This  is  the  book  that  estab 
lished  the  fame  of  Mr.  H. 
200 

TOLSTOY.    He  is  one  of  the 


greatest  writers  that  ever  lived 
but  that  does  not  mean  that  he 
is  a  great  artist.  178 

TOLSTOY.  The  great  Rus 
sian  is  less  of  an  artist  in  the 
literary  sense  than  Howells. 
27 

To  ONE  IN  PARADISE.  In 
terpretation  of  a  mood  in  this 
poem.  222 

TRAJAN.  He  was  respecta 
ble  in  his  way.  165 

TRICK,  A  LITERARY.  How 
the  English  play  it  upon  our 
deluded  selves  and  why  we 
"fall"  for  it.  23 

TROLLOPE,  ANTHONY.  He  is 
no  literary  artist  but  I  think 
him  a  great  novelist,  in  fact, 
one  of  the  very  great  ones.  24 

TROLLOPE,  ANTHONY.  He 
knew  a  thing  or  two  about 
women.  69 

TROLLOPE.  He  says  a  posi 
tively  silly  thing  about  writ 
ing.  40 

TROLLOPE,  ANTHONY.  His 
right  to  his  method.  175 

TROLLOPE,  ANTHONY.  His 
greatest  scene.  145 

TROLLOPE,  ANTHONY.  His 
intimacy  is  contrasted  with 
that  of  Howells.  Personally 
I  like  intimate  writers  but  I 
think  the  trait  is  appreciated 
mainly  by  the  sophisticated 
class  of  readers.  In  writing 


262 


Index 


for  the  young  one  must  not 
risk  too  great  a  degree  of  inti 
macy.  Young  people  don't 
like  intimacy— in  the  good 
sense — as  much  as  do  their 
elders.  I  make  these  observa 
tions  because  I  say  something 
else  in  the  text.  34 

TROLLOPE,  ANTHONY.  His 
specialty  is  the  delineation  of 
character.  101 

TROLLOPE,  ANTHONY.  Mas 
culinity  of  his  Englishmen  in 
comparison  with  the  feminin 
ity  of  the  Americans  of  How- 
ells.  79 

TROLLOPE,  ANTHONY.  Mis 
conception  of  his  act.  173 

TURGENIEFF.  "He  belongs 
to  the  limited  class  of  very 
careful  writers,"  says  Henry 
James.  "It  is  to  be  admitted 
at  the  outset  that  he  is  a  zeal 
ous  genius,  rather  than  an 
abundant  one.  His  line  is  nar 
row  observation.  He  has  not 
the  faculty  of  rapid,  passion 
ate,  almost  reckless  improvisa- 
tion-4hat  of  Walter  Scott,  of 
Dickens,  of  George  Sand. 
This  is  an  immense  charm  in  a 
story-teller;  on  the  whole,  to 
our  sense,  the  greatest.  Tur- 
genieff  lacks  it;  he  charms  us 
in  other  ways.  To  describe 
him  in  the  fewest  terms,  he  is  a 
story-teller  who  has  taken 

263 


notes."    He  is  not  as  great  as 
our  classic.    110 

TURGENIEFF.  "The  Rus 
sians,  among  whom  fiction 
flourishes  vigorously,  deem  him 
their  greatest  artist,"  to  quote 
Henry  James  again.  "His 
tales  are  not  numerous,  and 
many  of  them  are  very  short. 
He  gives  us  the  impression  of 
writing  much  more  for  love 
than  for  lucre.  He  is  particu 
larly  a  favorite  with  people  of 
cultivated  taste;  and  nothing, 
in  our  opinion,  cultivates  the 
taste  more  than  to  read  him." 
His  position  then  is  that  of 
artist.  178 

ULALUME.  This  great  poem 
serves  as  an  illustration  of  the 
extent  to  which  Howells,  like 
Stedman  and  the  rest  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  deaf,  dumb  and 
blind,  fails  to  see  what  is  ob 
vious.  225 

UNDISCOVERED  COUNTRY, 
THE.  It  goes  into  no  depths 
except  those  of  love.  201 

UNDISCOVERED  COUNTRY, 
THE.  Snow  is  made  much  of 
in  this  masterpiece.  Snow  is 
finely  handled  in  "A  Modern 
Instance."  I  suspect  Howells 
is  fond  of  snow.  52 

UNDISCOVERED  COUNTRY, 
THE.  Words  can  convey  no 


William  Dean  Howells 


idea  of  the  exquisite  poetry  of 
the  effects  attained  by  How- 
ells  in  this  novel.  His  differ 
entiation  of  the  several  male 
characters  is  very  convincing, 
very  humorous.  45 

UNITED  STATES  GOVERN 
MENT.  It  is  highly  respecta 
ble.  165 

UNIVERSITY,  AMERICAN.  Its 
subservience  to  the  great 
literary  superstition.  10 

VALERIE  MARNEFFE.  I  al 
low  myself  the  luxury  of  an 
other  quotation  from  dear 
Henry  James:  "Never  is  he 
[Balzac]  more  himself  than 
among  his  coquettes  and  cour 
tesans,  among  Madame 
Schontz  and  Josepha,  Madame 
Marneffe  and  Madame  de 
Rochefide.  'Balzac  loves  his 
Valerie,'  says  M.  Taine,  speak 
ing  of  his  attitude  toward  the 
horrible  Madame  Marneffe, 
the  depths  of  whose  depravity 
he  is  so  actively  sounding ;  and 
paradoxical  as  it  sounds  it  is 
perfectly  true.  She  is,  accord 
ing  to  Balzac's  theory  of  the 
matter,  a  consummate  Pari- 
sienne,  and  the  depravity  of 
a  Parisienne  is  to  his  sense  a 
more  remunerative  spectacle 
than  the  virtue  of  any  provtn- 
ciale,  whether  her  province  be 

264 


Normandy  or  Gascony,  Eng 
land  or  Germany.  Never  does 
he  so  let  himself  go  as  in  these 
cases — never  does  his  imagina 
tion  work  so  at  a  heat.  Fem 
inine  nerves,  feminine  furbe 
lows,  feminine  luxury  and 
subtlety,  intoxicate  and  inspire 
him;  he  revels  among  his  in 
numerable  heroines  like  Ma 
homet  in  his  paradise  of 
houris."  You  never  meet  the 
kind  in  Howells.  The  why 
and  the  wherefore.  67 

VICAR  OF  WAKEFIELD,  THE. 
There  are  points  in  common 
between  it  and  the  graces  of 
Howells.  107 

VICAR  OF  WAKEFIELD,  THE. 
What  makes  me  think  of  it. 
152 

VICTORIAN,  EARLY.  The 
literature  called  by  that  name. 
14, 

VICTORIANS.  They  have  a 
great  time.  114 

VICTORIANS,  THOSE.  Con 
found  them!  63 

VILE  WOMEN.  The  novelist 
who  knows  them  well  and  the 
novelist  who  does  not.  56 

VRIES,  HUGO  DE.  That  does 
not  sound  like  an  English 
name.  8 

WALLACE,  ALFRED  RUSSEL. 
This  scientist  affords  an  excel- 


Index 


lent  illustration  of  my  attitude      Howells  has  no  objection  to  it, 

of  course.  Hear  him  rave: 
"Even  the  power  of  writing 
short  stories,  which  we  suppose 
ourselves  to  have  in  such  excel 
lent  degree,  has  spread  from 
New  England.  That  is,  in 
deed,  the  home  of  the  Amer 
ican  short  story,  and  it  has 
there  been  brought  to  such 
perfection  in  the  work  of  Miss 
Wilkins,  of  Miss  Jewett,  of 
Miss  Brown,  and  of  that  most 
faithful,  forgotten  painter  of 
manners,  Mrs.  Rose  Terry 
Cook,  that  it  presents  upon 
the  whole  a  truthful  picture  of 
New  England  village  life  in 
some  of  its  more  obvious 
phases."  171 

WOMAN.  Howells  has  a 
whole  philosophy  of  her.  I 
must  say  of  him  what  Henry 
James  says  of  Balzac:  "Bal 
zac  is  supposed  to  have  un 
derstood  the  feminine  organ 
ism  as  no  one  had  done  before 
him — to  have  had  the  feminine 
heart,  the  feminine  tempera 
ment,  feminine  nerves,  at  his 
fingers*  ends — to  have  turned 
the  feminine  puppet,  as  it 
were,  completely  inside  out. 
He  has  placed  an  immense 
number  of  women  on  the 
stage,  and  even  those  critics 
who  are  least  satisfied  with  his 


to    Howells    and    his    school. 
207 

WARDEN,  THE.  A  subtle  ob 
servation  in  it.  173 

WHITMAN,  WALT.  What 
names  one  drags  in  irrelevantly 
when  one  is  writing  literary 
criticism !  I  am  as  bad  as  Wil 
liam  Crary  Brownell  and  he  is 
bad  enough.  66 

WILDE,  OSCAR.  His  "Gluky- 
pikros  Eros"  ought  to  have 
been  quoted  in  the  text: 

".  .  .  have  made  my  choice, 
have  lived  my  poems,  and 
though  youth  is  gone  in  wasted 
days, 

"I  have  found  the  lover's 
crown  of  myrtle  better  than 
the  poet's  crown  of  bays." 

The  word  "better"  here  is 
less  appropriate  than  the  word 
"sweeter,"  or  so  it  seems  to  me. 
6 

WILFER,  MRS.  The  allusion 
is  to  the  character  in  Dickens's 
novel  of  "Our  Mutual  Friend," 
14 

WILKINS.  This  is  the 
maiden  name  of  the  lady  who 
has  since  become  Mrs.  Free 
man  and  whose  tales  I  am 
sorry  I  am  forced  to  disparage 
owing  to  my  objection  to  the 
sissy  school  of  literature. 


265 


William  Dean  Howells 


toost  elaborate  female  por 
traits  must  at  least  admit  that 
he  has  paid  the  originals  the 
compliment  to  hold  that  they 
play  an  immense  part  in  the 
world.  It  may  be  said,  in 
deed,  that  women  are  the  key 
stone  of  the  'Come'die  Hu- 
maine.'  If  the  men  were 
taken  out,  there  would  be  great 
gaps  and  fissures;  if  the 
women  were  taken  out,  the 
whole  fabric  would  collapse." 
Observe,  however,  that  Bal 
zac's  great  women  are  wicked. 
Those  of  Howells  are  all  good. 
131 

WOMAN.  Howells  reveals 
her  as  the  real  ruler.  71 

WOMAN.  Megalomania  is 
her  trait.  118 

WOMAN.  She  feminizes 
man.  Howells  makes  a  strik 
ing  remark  which  ought  to  be 
pondered :  "It  seems  somehow 
more  permissible  for  women  in 
imaginary  actions  to  figure  as 
men  than  for  men  to  figure  as 
women.  In  the  theater  we  have 
conjectured  how  and  why  this 
may  be,  but  the  privilege,  for 
less  obvious  reasons,  seems  yet 
more  liberally  granted  in  fic 
tion.  A  woman  may  tell  a 
story  in  the  character  of  a  man 
and  not  give  offence,  but  a  man 
cannot  write  a  novel  in  auto 


biographical  form  from  the 
personality  of  a  woman  with 
out  imparting  the  sense  of 
something  unwholesome.'*  81 

WOMAN.  The  Howells  kind 
must  be  virtuous.  63 

WOMAN.  There  is  the  By- 
ronic  type,  the  Shelley  ideal 
and  the  Wordsworthian  sort. 
62 

WORDSWORTH,  WILLIAM. 
Greater  as  a  poet  than  Poe,  he 
is  inferior  as  an  artist.  57 

WORDSWORTH,  WILLIAM.  He 
advised  Robert  Montgomery 
to  pay  no  heed  to  the  opinion 
others  had  of  his  work.  188 

WORDSWORTH,  WILLIAM.  His 
"Daffodils'*  and  his  "Ode" 
afford  me  material  for  some 
reflections  which  might  have 
been  omitted,  but  after  all  I 
wrote  this  book  to  satisfy  my 
self.  59 

WORDSWORTHIAN  WOMAN. 
Why  Marcia  is  one.  73 

YAANEK.  I  believe  this 
word  in  Poe's  poem  of 
Ulalume  to  be  a  key  word. 
The  names  in  the  poem — Weir, 
Auber  and  so  forth — make  me 
suspect  that  if  one  had  the 
time  and  the  ingenuity,  a  ci 
pher  of  the  kind  that  Poe  so 
loved  or  at  least  a  cryptogram 
would  be  unfolded.  There  is 


266 


Index 


probably  some  scandal  behind 
the  mystery  of  these  lines.  226 
YOUNG  MAN.  "A  man," 
says  Howells  in  his  greatest 
novel,  "has  not  reached  the 
age  of  twenty-six  in  any  com 
munity  where  he  was  born  and 
reared  without  having  had  his 
capacity  pretty  well  ascer 
tained;  and  in  Boston  the  an 
alysis  is  conducted  with  an  un 
sparing  thoroughness  which 
may  fitly  impress  the  un-Bos- 
tonian  mind,  darkened  by  the 
popular  superstition  that  the 
Bostonians  blindly  admire  one 
another.  A  man's  qualities 
are  sifted  as  closely  in  Boston 


as  they  doubtless  were  in  Flor 
ence  or  Athens;  and,  if  final 
mercy  was  shown  in  those 
cities  because  a  man  was,  with 
all  his  limitations,  an  Athenian 
or  Florentine,  some  abatement 
might  as  justly  be  made  in 
Boston  for  like  reason."  The 
figure  he  cuts  in  the  Howells 
world  and  the  reverence  he 
feels.  140 

YOUTH.  The  greatest  crime 
of  which  a  native  American  of 
Anglo-Saxon  origin  can  be 
guilty.  92 


ZEPPELIN.    We     don't 
that  to  the  English.    7 


owe 


267 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642-3405 

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on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


LD 


JUN  k  '69  -2 


LD  21A-40m-2,'69 
(J6057slO)476 — A-32 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


"37/6X3 


3 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


